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Let’s end funding for Clean Elections

December 3, 2010 By 19 Comments

From the last campaign cycle, we now discover Clean Elections money bought expensive laptops, paid sign helpers, and funded parties. We are all human, thus tend to be less stewardly with other people’s money than we are with our own.

I understand because I just ran a traditionally funded campaign for State Senate in Tempe and south Scottsdale (District 17) and cut costs by riding my bicycle to knock on 10,000 doors. I chose not to fund my campaign with Clean Elections money because Arizona is in a financial crisis. I considered it a wonderful privilege to run. By the end of the campaign, 400 generous people donated to my race. I started by asking ex-military friends who served alongside me to donate, then asked Tempe and south Scottsdale friends and voters upon whose doors I knocked. Also like-minded, small-business-oriented political action committees donated to me such as the dairymen, cattlemen, CPAs, cotton growers, osteopaths, optometrists, and farmers; even though by law their donations could only total a small fraction of the final sum. I accepted no money from unions or corporations. Some might argue that fundraising is too time consuming. I run a small business with 10 full-time employees, plus we have two ASU student kids. So I just applied my motto of “Work hard. Follow through.”

We live in a magnificent state and a great nation, uniquely different from countries where I served half of my 20-year Air Force career, where going door-to-door to meet voters is not commonplace. Let’s eliminate Clean Elections and follow a back-to-basics approach to political campaigning. Arizona politics would be strengthened by a resurgence of responsibility-taking. Eliminating Clean Elections would be a great first step toward restoring public faith in our state government.

Wendy Rogers was the recent Republican nominee for State Senate in Legislative District 17. She was the leading Republican vote getter in nearly every single precinct of LD-17, exceeding both Governor Brewer and Congressman-elect Schweikert by 3 to 5 percentage points in all 69 precincts. Her rag-tag, shoestring-budget campaign, while still ‘amassing’ a respectable amount of $88,000 of privately raised money, paled in comparison to what a US congressional campaign spent. So it goes to show what boots on the ground and bike tire rubber can accomplish.

Filed Under: Campaign Finance, Guest Opinion Tagged With: , ,

Franks Responds to DADT Report

December 3, 2010 By 4 Comments

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Bethany Haley or Ben Carnes at (202) 225-4576

Calls On President Obama to Refrain from Social Engineering with our Armed Forces During a Time of War

December 2, 2010 — Following a briefing by Jeh Johnson, General Counsel for the Department of Defense, and General Carter Ham, the U.S. Army’s Commanding Officer in Europe, on the Pentagon’s new report on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and in light of recent attempts by Congressional Democrats to overturn current military policy, Congressman Trent Franks (AZ-02) today released the following statement urging Democrats to stop using our military as a test bed for their own radical social agenda:

“It is disturbing to me that despite the fact that an overwhelming number of our commanding generals oppose repealing the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) policy, particularly during a time of war, the Obama Administration is insisting on imposing its ideological commitment to ‘fundamentally transform America’ on the men and women of our armed forces who even today are fighting to keep us all free.

“The DOD report cited as evidence justifying the repeal of this policy was obviously engineered to bring about a predetermined result. It also remains to be seen whether a climate of intimidation helped generate some of the survey findings. The fact is, in repeated Armed Services Committee hearings, our warfighters have raised concerns that the implications of repealing DADT have not been given full consideration as they should, in public hearings as well as in the public forum.

“Just today, a coalition of 40 million Americans sent a letter to Senators urging them not to repeal DADT. Among the concerns they raise is also the potential effect that repealing DADT would have on religious freedom. Those who oppose a repeal of DADT have already been labeled “bigots” by one general, and it is possible that chaplains would be forbidden to teach about their denomination’s position on homosexuality were the repeal to pass. Furthermore, they point out that the time between the release of the DOD report and adjournment is simply inadequate to thoroughly investigate all these related issues.

“Either Democrats’ have not fully realized the negative impact a repeal of this policy would have, or they don’t care. Either way, their blind commitment to social engineering and ramming a DADT repeal through the Congress will have a tangible and potentially dangerous effect upon our service men and women on the ground.”

Attached is a copy of the coalition letter referenced above. It can also be accessed here.

Congressman Franks is serving his fourth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, and is a member of the Committee on Armed Services, Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee, Military Readiness Subcommittee, Committee on the Judiciary, Constitution Subcommittee, and is Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law.

Filed Under: Culture, Homosexuality, Military, Press Release Tagged With: , ,

Goldwater Institute helps to reduce state’s deficit

December 2, 2010 By 2 Comments

by Clint Bolick
Goldwater Institute

At least one state agency is in the holiday spirit.

Check out the website for Arizona’s Citizens Clean Elections Commission and you’ll see a nicely wrapped gift of $20 million that was “donated” to the state’s general fund. “This badly needed transfusion of funds,” proclaims executive director Todd Lang, “would not be available were it not for the existence of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.”

Well, that’s true, sort of, in the same way as chemotherapy wouldn’t exist if not for cancer. That’s not exactly something to put in a gift basket.

And the commission’s generosity didn’t come willingly. If Arizona taxpayers have a Santa Claus, in this case it’s the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued an injunction in June 2010 against the practice of giving matching funds to taxpayer-subsidized candidates when their privately supported opponents raise or spend above specific levels. The injunction led to a sizable surplus in the commission’s funding.

Happily, the Supreme Court just decided to hear the merits of the Goldwater Institute’s legal challenge to matching funds. By next June, matching funds could be forever barred, and the commission cheerfully can reduce the state’s budget deficit even more.

Better yet, let’s eliminate subsidies for politicians altogether. The Cronkite News Service reports that candidates this year used taxpayer funds for such high-minded purposes as lap-top computers (which the candidates get to keep after the election, win or lose) and mariachi bands. And, as my colleague Mark Flatten reports, the commission spends millions of dollars on self-promotion and lobbying. Indeed, the commission’s website reads like a campaign ad against a likely future ballot measure to end subsidies for politicians once and for all.

Putting the commission out of existence and further reducing the state’s deficit surely would merit a hearty “ho ho ho” from Arizona taxpayers.

Clint Bolick is director of the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.

Learn More:

Goldwater Institute: McComish v. Bennett

Goldwater Institute: Clean Elections Agency Spends Millions to Promote Itself

Citizens Clean Elections Commission: CCEC Gives $20 Million to Arizona’s General Fund

Cronkite News Service: What Clean Elections money bought

Filed Under: Campaign Finance, Constitutional Law, Freedom of Speech, Judicial, State Budget

Supreme Court sees national implications in challenge to Arizona’s ‘Clean Elections’

December 1, 2010 By 1 Comment

by Nick Dranias
Goldwater Institute

As the Supreme Court considered the Goldwater Institute’s appeal in McComish v. Bennett, the justices had to decide if the case raises any issues of nationwide importance. This week, the Court said the Goldwater Institute’s challenge to the use of matching funds in Arizona’s “Clean Elections” system meets that test. The Supreme Court accepted the appeal and will hear oral arguments sometime in the spring of 2011.

The appeal asks the Supreme Court to overrule a refusal by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to strike down the use of matching funds. Arizona’s system guarantees privately-funded candidates who raise or spend money above a certain threshold will prompt the government to subsidize their political opponents in nearly equal measure.

Arizona’s matching funds system violates the First and 14th Amendments by adding special burdens on how and when privately-funded candidates raise or spend money. As explained by Judge Carlos Bea, who dissented from the Ninth Circuit’s decision to preserve Arizona’s matching funds system, “it makes no more sense” for privately-funded candidates to raise or spend money on campaign speech “than for a poker player to make a bet if he knows the house is going to match his bet for his opponent.”

Although labeled differently, similar matching funds systems have existed in government campaign financing schemes throughout the United States, including Connecticut, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. Most recently, California and Illinois flirted with the idea of creating matching funds systems for elections in those states.

The Supreme Court has recognized that all states need to know the constitutional limits for using taxpayer money to boost publicly funded candidates confronted by opponents who are successful at raising campaign funds on their own. The Court now has the opportunity to permanently end a government funding scheme that makes it harder for privately funded candidates to exercise their First Amendment rights.

Nick Dranias holds the Clarence J. and Katherine P. Duncan Chair for Constitutional Government and is director of the Joseph and Dorothy Donnelly Moller Center for Constitutional Government at the Goldwater Institute.

Learn More:

Goldwater Institute: Petition for Certiorari

Goldwater Institute: Reply Brief in Support of Petition for Certiorari

Washington Post: Supreme Court to weigh constitutionality of Arizona public campaign finance law

Chicago Tribune: Justices to rule on Arizona campaign law

Filed Under: Campaign Finance, Campaigns & Elections, Constitutional Law, Freedom of Speech, Judicial
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