RALEIGH – In the wake of the Jim Black scandal, some policymakers and observers have called for campaign-finance reform – by which they mean taxpayer-subsidized campaigns – as a proper and indispensable response. It’s not. It’s bad political pharmacology. It’s a misdiagnosis to blame Black’s misdeeds on the current campaign-finance system, and taxpayer financing would be neither a cure nor even an analgesic.
Black is a felon. He sold access to government power for political and personal gain. Most politicians are not felons. They do not sell their offices for cash in bathrooms, or bribe lawmakers to reverse election results in a bid to maintain control. To portray the existence of a voluntary system of campaign finance as a cause of Black’s crime is both to indict, at least implicitly, everyone else in politics as a potential felon and to excuse Black’s misdeeds.
Does the need for campaign cash present politicians with certain temptations? Absolutely. So does their proximity to enough coercive power to favor one economic competitor over another, or punish those interests who are lined up on the “wrong team,” as I have previously argued. There is nothing wrong with advocating reforms of the political system and the legislative process. But let’s not make excuses for criminals.
Getting the government more heavily involved in regulating or financing political campaigns is a bad idea that will have results markedly different from, and in some cases precisely opposite to, the benefits that advocates have long promised. This is no longer a theoretical matter – though there are good legal, constitutional, and philosophical reasons to oppose taxpayer subsidies and heavy regulations – because several states have adopted campaign-finance schemes similar to what North Carolina activists propose, and the results are far from promising.
One argument for taxpayer-subsidized elections is that they would make campaigns more competitive and open the door to less-known, less-connected challengers. It doesn’t work that way. Most “reforms” attach limits on campaign spending and private fundraising to the receipt of government campaign funds, often allocating more money to candidates whose opponents raise additional funds or who benefit from independent expenditures by private groups. Because incumbents start a campaign with valuable advantages such as name recognition and taxpayer-funded offices, challengers must often outspend incumbents to be competitive. The limitations on private funding, therefore, serve as an incumbency-protection device. (They also increase the relative power of media companies, whose work is conveniently – and properly – excluded from the purview of regulators even though it sometimes confers significant electoral benefits on particular candidates.)
In Maine, for example, a taxpayer-financing system began operation for the 2000 election cycle. Political scientist Patrick Basham and economist Martin Zelder examined the 1998 and 2000 Maine elections, using detailed analysis and regressions to test changes in partisan competition and election margins. “Although enhanced electoral competition has been predicted as a result of clean-election regulations,” they wrote, “the evidence from Maine implies the opposite.” The researchers found that in so-called “clean districts” the margins weren’t any closer, and indeed incumbents were “far more likely” to run for re-election in those districts than in other districts. “Rather than making incumbents more vulnerable to challenge,” Basham and Zelder concluded, Maine’s new system “helped to entrench incumbents, diminishing electoral competition.” Far from being a statistical outlier, their findings were similar to previous research of other state campaign systems.
By the way, the vast majority of funds for the Maine system come from general income and sales taxes, not from tax-return check-offs or other voluntary devices. Again, this is inevitable. Not enough people will choose to support these systems. North Carolina’s experience with government-funded judicial campaigns has been the same – the state has already resorted to bailing out the system with general funds and compelling attorneys to “contribute” as a condition for practicing law.
Putting government further into the campaign business also results in constant litigation, partisan gamesmanship, and a tremendous amount of confusion. Arizona’s “reform” system, enacted in 1998, has exhibited all of these defects. Allison Hayward of the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix studied election participation, competition, and legislative voting behavior and found none of the benefits Arizona activists had promised. Arizona incumbents have benefited mightily from the new system. Hayward argued that it “imposes real burdens on political speech and on the ability to run for office.”
I’ll stick with my previously articulated proposals for Freedom-Zoned Elections. But I’ll add that neither mine nor anyone else’s preferred reforms will prevent crooked politicians from obtaining and misusing government power.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.