Melinda Tuhus Photo
After two hours, New Haven’s state legislators fielded one last question from the public — and ended up responding to a plea to salvage Connecticut’s imperiled clean-elections law. One legislator promised to help, while others equivocated.
The plea came from community activist Aaron Goode (pictured). He asked it Saturday morning from the back of City Hall’s aldermanic chambers, where seven of the city’s eight state legislators had just finished talking with 35 citizens for two hours about the workings of Connecticut’s government.
“Our state system of publicly financing elections is on life support,” Goode began. “As you know, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals will be deciding its fate.” Last August, U.S. Superior Court Judge Stefan Underhill ruled the 2005 law is unconstitutional, largely because the new rules discriminate against minor parties. (Click here for details on the law and the judge’s ruling.) The law to provide public funding for political campaigns to candidates who fulfill certain criteria (such as raising a minimum of small donations) was first implemented in state House and Senate races in 2008. This is the first year it was supposed to apply to statewide offices of governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general and comptroller.
The combination of Underhill’s ruling and the emergence of self-financing wealthy candidates has put the efficacy of the new law in question, although some gubernatorial candidates (including Dan Malloy and Rudy Marconi) are embracing public financing and challenging opponents to join them.
“There’s also a financial issue,” Goode continued, “as $17 million of these funds [set aside for candidates] have been raided” to meet other budget obligations.
He asked the state legislators Saturday if they would commit to rewriting the law so it passes constitutional muster and prevents any further raids on the fund, while if necessary also reducing the size of the grants.
“This is something that can be successfully addressed this session,” Goode concluded. “How can we save this program, which in my view is the most important legislation to come out of Hartford in the last ten years?”
State Sen. Martin Looney (pictured) responded first. He said he supports fixing the legislation. He said the co-chairs of the relevant committees of the General Assembly are working on it now, for the session that begins Feb. 3. He added that the Jan. 21 U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing direct corporate contributions to political campaigns “creates a very threatening situation” for financing elections.
He said there’s “strong interest” in both the state House and Senate to preserve the fund, but noted that several candidates for statewide office have already signaled they’ll opt out of the fund, including both Democratic and Republican candidates for governor (Ned Lamont and Tom Foley, respectively), and current Secretary of the State, Democrat Susan Bysiewicz, in her race for attorney general.
“Another issue is that frankly, a number of the elements of the current law that were critiqued by Judge Underhill in his decision were exactly the things that helped get it passed in the General Assembly in the first place,” Looney continued. Specifically, the tougher requirements for third parties to qualify for public funding. “There was concern about not having enough thresholds for third party and minor party candidates to demonstrate basic community support rather than having people run merely because they’re attracted by the possibility of public financing.
“The judge was also concerned about the idea of supplemental grants grants for people facing an opponent who was wealthy and self-funded. He also objected to higher grants from public funds in essentially one-party districts” like New Haven, where the non-dominant but “major” party would get the same full grant as the dominant party but have the same small chance of winning as any minor party candidate.
“I think those objections can be overcome,” Looney concluded, by creating “an across-the-board threshold in terms of number of contributions, dollar amounts of contributions, and number of contributions from the communities that persons are looking to represent that can meet those objectives.” He also noted that if the grants should be reduced too much, though it would save money, “there’s less incentive for candidates to actually participate.” There’s currently between $36 million and $40 million in the fund.
At this point, State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield (pictured State Sen. Toni Harp) jumped in. “A lot of issues are moved by people actually doing something outside of the legislative body,” he said. “I hear a lot of people talking about how important this issue is, but I haven’t seen a lot of action by advocates. I don’t see them showing up at the General Assembly. Seems to me if you want a system that’s clean, you might want to keep this law intact, and I don’t see a lot of action. I think people have to get up off their rear ends and do something and say we want this. I think we have to educate about what’s really going on. There’s an argument going on that we are using people’s money when we do this. Well, yes you are, but the government also belongs to the people, and there’s a balancing act there.”
Next up was Rep. Juan Candelaria, who praised the law and said he voted for it. “But one of the issues right now that I’m hearing a lot from [my] constituency is that we have key social services that are in critical need of funding,” Candelaria said. “I supported the legislation, but we have millions upon millions of dollars in the campaign finance funds, and yet we’re talking about cutting social services that are critical to our community. How do I go back to a constituent that uses one of our school-based clinics — and those are our children that don’t have a voice. And so we’re going to close that out because we’re going to use those dollars to fund our campaigns. And yes, it creates democracy and yes, it creates competition, which is excellent, but there is that balance that we’re facing. At the end of the day, if I have to choose, I’m going to make sure we protect social services.”
State Rep. Pat Dillon (pictured) raised another point: “I voted for it; it’s very important, but it’s cluttered up with a lot of regulations that make it very difficult for a volunteer campaign. Every single mistake you make subjects your volunteer treasurer to a thousand-dollar penalty. So we should simplify it.”
She also said the law must be better explained to people, because when she took public money for her last race, she was criticized by some who said she had no opponent. “It was almost like I had stolen something,” she protested. She said she did have an opponent, just not one who actively campaigned. Plus, she noted, there’s no way to know when applying for the funding whether a candidate will have an opponent or not.
The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision “may moot anything we do, if someone brings another action” opposing the law, Dillon concluded.