Posted: 11/14/06

To peddle public financing,
the marketing has to be perfect.

George Skelton
Los Angeles Times

 

     When initiatives fail, when any legislation fails, supporters supply reasons, many of which are intended to show that but for some mistake, tactical or drafting, the public will for their measure would have prevailed.  This seems to be the case in California where public financing supporters are explaining, in a manner not always distinguishable from rationalizing, the defeat of Proposition 89.  The Los Angeles Times’ George Skelton suggests that the financing mechanism, a corporate tax, was faulty; he mentions also limits on corporate contributions to ballot initiatives.  "Campaign fund reform deserves another chance," Los Angeles Times (Nov. 13, 2006).   Others, who supported the measure, are not convinced:  the public might have fallen hard for the notion that campaign financing is not much more than “welfare for politicians.”

     There is no expertise to be found here on why California voters chose as they did.  What is clear that, on both the state and federal level, the search for the “perfect marketing” will continue.  Advocates for repaired public financing in presidential elections have rallied, many of them, around a new bill and they argue, too, that public support is there, to be tapped, if only the proper arguments and processes are used.  On the federal level, as in California, various explanations for limited public enthusiasm have been tested, including the absence of adequate “education” about the nature of the tax-check-off.

     But it would seem that if the public interest is to be so passionately invoked, then public opinion—registered most recently in the Prop 89 balloting—should not be so readily discounted.  “Welfare for politicians” is not only a slogan popular among the ignorant masses.  It captures, with obvious imprecision, a number of reactions:  politicians legislating resources for their own elections with the money of others, and doing so through means that are on their face both complicated and coercive (complexity not infrequently or irrationally associated with coercion).  Public resistance—at least wariness—may be just a straightforward skepticism about intricate schemes to control access to political money by arranging for the public, whichever segment of the public, to bear the costs.  And, while corporations had a special stake in resisting the tax they faced to pay for the California plan, other taxpayers might have wondered whether, if this tax is approved, another with their name on it might be just around the corner.

     Most striking about the post-mortems on Proposition 89 is their relative scarcity, especially when contrasted with the abundant homage paid elsewhere in the nation to the recent Congressional elections, funded at historic levels with private money.  These elections are seen as a true measure of public will—for change, or for punishment of the ruling party—and the recently reformed federal laws have been proclaimed a success in encouraging sharp increases in fundraising and spending from relatively safe sources.  Or, it might be said:  fundraising and spending from sources, the parties, that have regained the admiration of reformers because their swollen treasuries somehow prove how well federal legislation has functioned.  Suddenly, a lot of private money does not seem so bad.

     Here is a marketing challenge:  what is the reason for overhauling the private funding system, replacing private with public monies but under restrictive, complex conditions for their use, if the federal law has shown how well private financing can work? 

Bob Bauer