Legislators by a wide margin passed sweeping changes to the Clean Elections Act on June 19, marking the first and only occasion state lawmakers have amended the controversial 1998 campaign finance reform initiative.
The bill’s chief sponsor, Rep. Michele Reagan, R-8, was credited by House and Senate colleagues for overcoming the necessary three-quarter supermajority hurdle required to change the voter-approved initiative.
“She’s worked with everyone and she’s the reason you see all these green votes up there, and no red votes,” said Rep. Marian McClure, R-30, pointing to the House electronic voting vote.
Insiders said the supermajority requirement meant hard bargaining for friends and foes of Arizona’s publicly funded campaign system.
Supporters were eager to conciliate with opponents whom they feared would go to the ballot next year to repeal the act, said Eric Ehst, executive director of the Clean Elections Institute, a campaign finance reform advocacy organization.
Alternative to ballot
No such ballot initiatives have been filed, but supporters interpreted earlier Senate attempts to change the Clean Elections Act to the Publicly Funded Elections Act as an indicator of an upcoming ballot fight.
The compromise with opponents meant the substantial raising of contribution limits — a sensitive issue given the act’s stated purpose of reducing the influence of special interests — and the removal of onerous campaign finance reporting requirements detested by many privately funded candidates, said Ehst.
Reagan’s H2690 allows individuals to collectively contribute up to $5,610 to candidates. Contributions from individuals to legislative candidates are capped at $390, and individuals are not permitted to contribute more than $1,010 to statewide candidates.
Private candidates will also be permitted to raise approximately $12,000 from political action committees, an increase from the previous limit of $8,016.
Compromise called ‘fair’
Barbara Klein, vice president of the Arizona League of Women Voters, a traditional campaign reform ally, said the increases invites special interest lobbyists to a degree, but changes made by the legislation to accommodate traditional candidates will be helpful “on a whole.”
“We don’t like to see any situation where special interests can creep through the door any further than they already are in, but I think this is a fair compromise,” said Klein
But Todd Lang, executive director of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, the state’s campaign oversight body, said the fixing of legitimate campaign law shortcomings, and not fear of an upcoming initiative to strike the campaign system, was the primary motivator for reaching a deal.
The first priority was to make campaigns fairer for both types of candidates. Two unpopular provisions regarding the awarding of matching funds, which have long been a point of contention and litigation, are addressed in the legislation, he said.
Matching funds awarded to publicly funded candidates in response to fund raising by private candidates will be reduced by 6 percent to help account for incurred fund raising expenses. Currently publicly funded candidates are matched dollar-for-dollar.
By using a percentage, said Lang, the commission will effectively avoid “endless investigations” into candidate complaints and reporting of actual fundraising costs, Lang said.
And, if the bill becomes law, privately funded candidates without primary opponents will no longer be disadvantaged by current provisions that do not deduct their primary spending from matching funds given to the general election campaigns of publicly funded opponents, he said.
That issue was raised last year in a losing lawsuit filed by five Republican candidates, including current state Treasurer Dean Martin and Rep. Kirk Adams, R-19.
But the crown jewel of the legislation is the funding increases granted to candidates running for statewide office with public funds, said Lang.
Publicly funded candidates for attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer will be given 60 percent more funding, and gubernatorial candidates will see an increase of 30 percent.
Candidates and campaign consultants have long complained that the funding levels for statewide candidates makes it nearly impossible to defeat incumbents or even to reach voters already bombarded with campaign messages from federal candidates and ballot initiatives.
Overwhelming support
While previous efforts to change the Clean Elections Act have been futile, H2690 passed the House on a 59-0 vote and advanced to the governor’s desk following a 24-2 approval in the Senate.
Though the legislation received wide approval, philosophical objections to the campaign system were still evident, and as Ehst noted, H2690’s successful course through the Legislature seemed to signal the evaporation of a possible ballot initiative attack.
Sen. Ron Gould, a Lake Havasu Republican, lamented that with the bill’s passing, voters will probably never be able to fix the fact that traditional candidates do not receive matching funds to counter independent expenditures made on behalf of publicly funded candidates.
“That will be in there forever and create an unlevel playing field for people who don’t want to take taxpayer money to fund their campaigns,” he said.
Reagan, a privately funded campaigner and admitted opponent of Clean Elections, said fellow detractors of the system were influenced to pass the legislation by a simple argument:
“I said, ‘Yeah, you don’t like it but you’re still going to have to live with it in 2008,’” she said. “That argument seemed to prevail in the long-run, but it took several stabs at it.”