Click here to listen to Daren Bakst discussing this Carolina Beat.
Scandal is running rampant in Raleigh. North Carolinians are struggling to pay their bills. Now the state Senate is expected to vote on a bill, House Bill 120, which would allow city council members to take your tax dollars and use them for their own personal purposes. Specifically, the money would be used to fund political campaigns.
The primary sponsor and champion of this political welfare bill is Rep. Rick Glazier, D-Cumberland. Amazingly, Glazier and like-minded politicians allege that these taxpayer-financed campaign programs would improve the public’s confidence in government.
Your hard-earned property tax dollars and other local taxes would be used to help politicians. Instead of paying off debts, you would be forced to pay for city politicians’ advertisements.
One of the biggest problems of taxpayer-financed campaigns is compelled speech. Taxpayers are forced to support candidates and speech they oppose. If a candidate wanted to raise city taxes, you would be forced to support that candidate financially even if you opposed higher taxes.
These taxpayer-financed systems also are incumbency protection schemes. For example, assume Candidate A decides against taking taxpayer dollars for her campaign. (I will refer to her as a traditional candidate.) Candidate B decides to take taxpayer dollars. (I will refer to her as a political welfare candidate.)
If Candidate A spends $5,000 beyond a threshold amount of money, $5,000 in “matching funds” would be provided to Candidate B. The whole point is to ensure that traditional candidates can’t spend more than the political welfare candidates.
When funding is equalized, it benefits incumbent candidates. There are many advantages to incumbency, such as name recognition, so it often requires additional money for a challenger to overcome these built-in advantages. When challengers can’t spend more than incumbents, they are far less likely to win.
For centuries, politicians have raised money to help them run for office. This allows citizens to decide voluntarily whether they want to support candidates. Now some politicians want to get rid of our voluntarily system and instead force everyone to support political welfare candidates.
Proponents argue that taxpayer-financed systems protect against the influence of wealthy special interests. However, they don’t mention that existing laws already cap how much money individual donors can contribute to campaigns.
Proponents don’t mention that taxpayer-financed systems clearly are unconstitutional after the June 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Davis v. Federal Election Commission.
In very simple terms, the Supreme Court in Davis held that the government couldn’t penalize a candidate for spending beyond a threshold amount of money because it unconstitutionally burdened his free speech rights.
This is exactly what North Carolina’s taxpayer-financed systems do. When a candidate spends beyond a threshold level, matching funds are provided to the opposition. In fact, the penalties in North Carolina are far worse than those considered in Davis.
Since Davis, legal experts such as former FEC chairman Bradley Smith have explained that these systems would very likely be unconstitutional. The New Jersey legislature decided against these taxpayer-financed systems after its legislative counsel warned that matching funds would most likely be found unconstitutional.
Proponents simply don’t care whether taxpayer financing is constitutional — they will ignore their oaths to the state and federal constitutions and wait for the courts to force them to get rid of their taxpayer-financed systems.
For years, North Carolina has listened to “reformers” who have created excessive campaign finance regulations, restricted free speech through contribution limits, crafted incoherent lobbying laws that discourage political participation, and advanced other policies that blame citizens while protecting the “innocent” politicians. Now they want to force citizens, from the poor to the wealthy, to pay local politicians money for their personal use.
How have their reforms worked for North Carolina? The state government’s corruption is at an all-time high. The state government has become a joke to the rest of the country — even Illinois is laughing. It’s time to ignore these “reformers” who think it’s for the “greater good” when government unethically restricts speech and forces taxpayers to subsidize politicians. A good place to start ignoring them is by shooting down House Bill 120.
Bakst, an attorney, is legal and regulatory analyst for the John Locke Foundation.