Massachusetts campaign spending getting out of hand
By Kirstin Ellison
Posted on Wed Jun 07, 2006 at 12:17:06 PM EST
Eileen McNamara, a Boston Globe columnist, puts the spotlight on Massachusetts campaign financing today.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Christopher Gabrieli has turned down public financing in order to avoid spending limits, which means his opponents will have to do the same if they want to be able to compete. As McNamara wastes no time in pointing out:
This is what the repeal of the Clean Elections Law has wrought -- a self-selecting system in which only the rich and the wired have access to the ballot in Massachusetts.
And yet:
It did not have to be this way. In 1996, voters overwhelmingly endorsed a Clean Elections Law that would have provided adequate public funds to allow qualified candidates to stand for elective office. It capped contributions and expenditures to limit the influence of special interests, an idea especially unpopular with legislative incumbents who run unchallenged two-thirds of the time and win reelection 98 percent of the time. No one was surprised when the Legislature blocked the law's implementation and ultimately repealed it on a cowardly voice vote.
Much more on this situation after the jump.
Common Cause Massachusetts makes a good case for campaign finance reform in the column:
Pamela Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, predicts that when it is all over next fall, the candidates in the general election will each have spent as much as $12 million in an effort to become the governor of Massachusetts.
Is anyone else nauseated yet?
And:
Gabrieli's decision was predictable, Wilmot said, ``because the money in the public fund now is too little to have made any difference. There are two kinds of people who can run: the rich and those who can raise big money. Money buys many things in this country; one of them shouldn't be political office."
Sorry for being so quote-heavy, but McNamara and Wilmot put it much better than I can. Connecticut and Maine have enacted Clean Elections -- could Massachusetts follow their lead (instead of taking the lead in 1996) and make New England the center of statewide public financing?
Tags: Massachusetts, In the States, Clean Elections, campaign spending, public financing (all tags)
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