A novel U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down an Arizona clean-elections law may lead to change in New Haven’s version — - but only a minor change.
That’s the verdict from Robert Wechsler, who administers the city’s Democracy Fund. It’s the pilot state program being tested in New Haven that offers public money to mayoral candidates who agree to limit spending and fundraising.
New Haven’s law may well be tweaked to confirm with the court ruling, but not in a way that would change how it has in effect worked so far.
Local and state governments across the country have experimented with such public-financing campaign laws in the hopes of limiting the influence of corporate fatcats in elections and enabling more non-rich people to run for office.
The U.S. Supreme Court has been chipping away at such laws. The most recent dent came this past Monday in a 5 – 4 ruling in a case called Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett. The court decided that so-called “triggers” are unconstitutional.
Here’s how a trigger works: Let’s say one candidate participates in a clean-elections system, limiting fundraising and spending in return for public money. Let’s say her opponent doesn’t participate, instead pouring millions upon millions into a campaign. (That happened with several state campaigns last year in Connecticut.) If that opponent keeps on spending past a certain threshold as the campaign progresses, that triggers another release of public money, enabling the first candidate to try to keep up.
The Court majority this week decided that such triggers limit the rich candidate’s free-speech rights — because that candidate may conceivably limit his further spending if he knows that will lead to his poorer opponent getting more public money. (Writing for the minority, Justice Elena Kagan argued that all that means is more people have more speech. Read a critique here.)
New Haven’s Democracy Fund sensed earlier this year that this Supreme Court ruling might be coming. So it warned mayoral candidates who hope to participate in this system in the current campaign not to seek to take advantage of the trigger, since it might be deemed unconstitutional.
No candidate has yet raised enough money to trigger the additional cash, anyway, and it doesn’t appear likely one will this year. “It’s really, really hard to reach that limit,” Wechsler said. The threshold is reached if a non-participating candidate spends over $340,000—and the participating candidate has spent 85 percent of an allowed $340,000. That triggers a $25,000 grant.
And even then, there’s an alternative to the trigger. The publicly financed candidate can simply get permission to continue seeking contributions (up to $340 apiece), in effect having a limit lifted.
Wechsler said that since that doesn’t constitute a new “grant,” it wouldn’t run afoul of the Supreme Court ruling, which dealt with triggers that lead to new funding.
Wechsler said the Fund’s board might choose to recommend to the Board of Aldermen that it modify the clean elections law to remove the trigger provision. He said he sees no rush. “There’s no reason to believe it’s going to become an issue” in this campaign, and even if it were, that alternative to the grant trigger exists.
The real meat of New Haven’s system involves money candidates can qualify for before triggers are even considered, anyway.
To qualify for public funds, a candidate needs contributions of at least $10 from 200 supporters, who must be New Haven voters, not out-of-town lobbyists. Reaching that benchmark nets the campaign $17,000. In addition, the first $25 of each qualifying contribution gets matched by $50. The campaign can accept money from non-New Haveners, but it won’t qualify for matching funds.Participating candidates agree not to accept individual contributions above $340. Absent the trigger of additional cash, candidates top out at $110,000 in matching money, plus the $15,000 grant.
Mayor John DeStefano, who pushed to create the law, is the only candidate who has ever qualified for public money from the Fund. This year he has decided not to participate, in part because he disagreed with sanctions his appointees on the Fund’s board applied to his campaign in the past. (Read about that here.) Democrats seeking to run against him in a Sept. 13 primary say they hope to participate in the fund this year; if they do, they will be able to raise only $340 per contributor, while DeStefano will be able to hit up city contractors and other campaign backers for $1,000 apiece.
West Rock Alderman Darnell Goldson, a supporter of the Democracy Fund (he wants it expanded to aldermanic races), said the idea of amending the law to conform to the Supreme Court decision “seems to make sense.” So he would “reluctantly” support it.
He’s reluctant because he disagrees with the Supreme Court ruling.
Goldson’s take:
“If we are truly interested in leveling the playing field for people who do not have the same means to fund campaigns as more well off candidates, and really want to elect non-professional politicians, the regular Joe Blow neighbor, then you have to believe that the Supreme Court got this one wrong.
“If someone with more money thinks they need to spend more to get their message out, so be it, God bless them. What I don’t understand is how providing the means for the other person to equal that spending violates free speech. The first well financed person is free to not spend that extra money, they do have a choice. The person without the means does not.”
Connecticut’s clean-elections law, passed in 2005, enabled Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to compete with self-financing millionaire candidate Ned Malloy in last year’s Democratic primary. He made use of a “trigger” to keep up with Lamont’s spending. But then the state removed that portion of the law in the wake of the 2nd Circuit decision in Bennett.