It’s certainly a detour if not the end of the road for a bill that’s been called “welfare for local politicians,” resulting from a grass-roots effort to defeat the legislation. House Bill 120, which called for taxpayer-funded political campaigns at the city level, is stuck in committee for the time being, with General Assembly watchers predicting that it won’t be seen again before the legislature adjourns.
The bill would mandate a public financing option for elections in cities with more than 50,000 people, a stipulation placed in the bill to garner support from otherwise unwilling Democrats from eastern North Carolina, explained Dallas Woodhouse, state director of Americans for Prosperity. Americans for Prosperity helped jump-start a grass-roots campaign against the bill.
“I hope we have defeated it at least for the foreseeable future. Nothing’s ever dead forever in politics,”Woodhouse explained. It was Woodhouse’s voice that North Carolinians heard on recorded phone calls explaining AFP’s opposition to the bill.
“We went down and spoke to groups in what we thought were swing districts, especially down in eastern North Carolina, places that are conservative Democrat districts. Those voters hate this type of stuff,” he said. “Especially in these economic times, they can’t believe the idea that their tax money would be used to fund politicians.”
Based on a pilot program adopted in Chapel Hill, the public financing option would work like this, says Daren Bakst, legal and regulatory policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation: Candidate A chooses not to take taxpayer dollars, depending instead on the tried-and-true campaign fundraising method of getting supporters to donate their own money. Candidate B, on the other hand, does decide to use the public financing option, which has a threshold of $100,000. “Once Candidate A spends beyond $100,000, money starts going to Candidate B. … For example, if Candidate A spends $105,000, then Candidate B gets $5,000 in matching funds,” Bakst said. he attempt is to level the fundraising playing field among candidates.
But Bakst says the result gives one contender an unfair advantage. “In calculating matching funds, it is the total of both Candidate A’s expenditures and the expenditures spent by independent groups that help Candidate A,” he said. “So if Candidate A spends $80,000, but independent groups spend $50,000, Candidate B receives $30,000 in matching funds.”
Woodhouse also noted the likely effects of public financing on free speech. “One thing we got at least some traction out of, and were able to point out, (is) for the first time (these) bills would compel taxpayers to fund political races that they then couldn’t even vote in,” he said. For example, tax dollars from a resident living in Council District 1 of a North Carolina city would finance races in the city’s other districts, where that resident cannot vote.
Although H.B. 120 would not compel cities to participate, Woodhouse says in this context, “voluntary” has lost its meaning. “It’s not voluntary to the voters, and it’s not voluntary
to the candidate (who opts not to use it). The one guy who does it gets free money,” he said. “This is a very partisan bill.”
Woodhouse also takes issue with the argument, offered by the bill’s Democratic sponsors, Reps. Rick Glazier, Melanie Goodwin, Pricey Harrison, and Winkie Wilkins, that public financing would free elections of influence from special interests.
“Here is a bill that is supposed to make everybody feel better about the electoral system, clean up the process,” Woodhouse said. Even so, the bill’s sponsors in the Senate repeatedly delayed votes until they thought a favorable mix of senators was available to support the measure. Continual pressure from the grass-roots network spurred by Americans for Prosperity and its partners kept that mix from coming together, he said.
“Voter-owned elections” may still return this session, however. Senate Bill 966, providing publicly financed elections beginning in 2012 for secretary of state, treasurer, attorney general, and the commissioners of labor and agriculture, is in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Colleen Calvani is a contributor to Carolina Journal.