{news} Hartford Advocate News - No Major Party Left Behind

Thu Dec 18 00:16:27 EST 2008

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News

No Major Party Left Behind

Greens grumble that the state's clean-elections law makes independents jump
through more hoops for campaign aid

Comments (3) <>
Thursday, December 18, 2008
By Andy Bromage
  <http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/sortable/image/ht51nc1%2Ejpg> Andy
Bromage photo
Green Party attorney Mark Lopez: Independent candidates are stuck.

Only the Green Party could complain about a state law that gives them keys
to a campaign war chest with more cash inside than they've ever dreamed of.

When's the last time you heard of a Green raising more than a few thousand
bucks to run for statewide office, or winning more than the usual 5 or 6
percent? The new Citizens' Election Program promises third parties up to $3
million in public money to run for office - the same as any Democrat or
Republican!

But there were the Greens in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport last week,
telling a judge that Connecticut's clean elections law is unconstitutional
because it makes minor parties work harder for campaign cash than
Republicans and Democrats. After two full days of testimony, their points
actually started making sense.

With receipts from Connecticut's first clean election not even tallied,
state officials found themselves back in court last week defending the
program, passed in 2005 after a string of embarrassing pay-for-play scandals
sent a host of public officials to prison.

The Green Party of Connecticut, along with the American Civil Liberties
Union and the lobbyists' association, are challenging the Citizens' Election
Program (CEP) on the grounds it discriminates against minor parties and
illegally bars lobbyists from donating to political campaigns.

The two-day bench trial was called to answer one question: Does the law, on
its face, discriminate against third parties?

Consider a few facts:

* Under the CEP, Republicans and Democrats are guaranteed public money to
run for governor, legislature and other state offices if they raise a base
amount of seed money in increments of $100 or less.

* Minor party candidates only get the full grant if they raise seed money
and if they won 20 percent of the vote for that seat in the prior election -
or collect signed petitions equal to 20 percent. They can get lesser grant
amounts for lesser shares of the vote: two-thirds of the grant for 15
percent, and one-third for 10 percent.

* Democrats and Republicans can get lucrative primary grants if they're
challenged from within, no matter how hopeless their opponent is. That
money's effectively off-limits to third parties, who almost never face
primaries.

* The CEP allows political parties to make "organizational expenditures" on
behalf of candidates, for consultants, literature and the like. That's a
huge advantage for Democrats and Republicans because it permits special
interest PACs and rich donors to funnel tens of thousands of dollars to
candidates they're barred from giving to directly, by passing it through
party fundraising committees.

* Nothing stops candidates from raising and spending unlimited money under
"exploratory" committees, then joining the public program at the last
possible moment. That again favors the major parties, which have party
infrastructure and a vast network of deep-pocketed donors already in place.

Qualifying might be doable in a state senate race, for instance, where you
might need 5,000 petitions to get the full $85,000 grant.

But what about the 2010 governor's race, when a candidate will, by one
estimate, need 400,000 signatures to qualify for public money? That's not
possible, according to Green Party attorney Mark Lopez. For one thing, at $2
per signature (a typical rate paid to canvassers) the $800,000 price-tag
would exceed the amount you're legally allowed to spend during the
qualifying period.

"You're in a box," Lopez told the court. "You can't get out if you're an
independent candidate."

Donald Green has a different theory on what's keeping the Green Party down:
Voters don't like them.

"Minor parties tend to have very little appeal to the voters," says Green, a
Yale University political science professor who testified as an expert
witness for the state. "The real reason there isn't support is the party's
position and organization."

Or lack of organization. The Greens field candidates (they ran a full slate
for Congress this year), but their efforts at party-building and voter
outreach are severely lacking, to say the least. That can make it hard to
sympathize.

Professor Green and the state's lawyers spent the better part of day two in
the wood-paneled courtroom telling U.S. District Judge Stefan R. Underhill
why the 20 percent threshold makes sense and why meeting the threshold isn't
as hard as Greens make it seem.

Under state statute, political parties achieve major party status once 20
percent of state voters register with them. Setting the bar for full funding
at 20 percent, instead of 5 percent like programs in Maine and Arizona do,
weeds out "non-serious" candidates whose antics would waste taxpayer money
and erode support for the program in the legislature, Green said. And it
keeps out so-called "stalking horse candidates," Democrats or Republicans
running sham campaigns in the guise of a "third party" purely to divide the
opposition.

But Judge Underhill saw an inherent flaw in the professor's logic: If
collecting signatures from 20 percent of the voting public is so easy (for
minor parties), then how would it deter major parties from running stalking
horse candidates anyway? "You can't have it both ways," the judge said.

Underhill probed an even bigger flaw: Republicans are just as unelectable as
Greens in some parts of the state - like right here in Bridgeport. Why
should Greens have to petition for public funds in those districts and not
the GOP?, Underhill asked.

The state's answer: Because even in places like Bridgeport, Republicans,
when they do run, outperform minor parties.

But it wasn't third parties wasting taxpayer dollars on legislative races
they couldn't possibly win this year. It was largely Republicans, and a few
Democrats.

Consider that in 2008, five minor-party candidates qualified for some level
of public funds, all of whom lost badly. Meanwhile, there were nine
major-party candidates for Senate and 33 for House who lost by 20 points or
more and still received the full public election grant. That's $85,000 for
Senate, $25,000 for House. In Greater Hartford, Democratic Sen. Eric Coleman
beat Republican long-shot Veronica Airey-Wilson 77-23. In Fairfield County,
Democrat Sen. Bob Duff crushed Republican Steven Papadakos 70-30.

You tell me who's a bigger drain on the clean election fund.|

E-mail
<mailto:editor at hartfordadvocate.com?subject=letter%20to%20the%20editor> us

Comments (3)
▼Post a Comment
First of all get your story right! Your presentages are way off on the
races!
Posted by Mark Gonzales on 12.16.08 at 14.05
Of course, when Republicans and CEOs get big checks from the government for
sitting on their butts, it's not "welfare", it's "stimulus".
Separate but equal is not equal. A system of first-class parties and
second-class parties has no place in a democracy. Everyone should have to
gather signatures, or no one should.
The problems that this alleged professor is warning about don't exist in
Maine or Arizona, where the threshold of support for receiving public
financing is 5%. Looks like professor Green (professor anti-Green?) didn't
do his homework.
Posted by greenferret <http://greenferret.wordpress.com/>  on 12.16.08 at
23.26
"But it wasn't third parties wasting taxpayer dollars on legislative races
they couldn't possibly win this year. It was largely Republicans, and a few
Democrats."

This is the real outcome of diverting taxpayer dollars from other priorities
to politicians' campaign coffers. Marginal candidates, otherwise destined to
be crushed by 20 points or more, are entitled to taxpayer money so they can
maybe lessen their loss by a few percentage points on election day.

The same people get elected, and they then go on to vote exactly the same
way as before when they were supposedly influenced by so-called "special
interest" money.

This whole thing is a scam, and the Greens' protest is just one facet of the
scheme.

Sean Parnell
President
Center for Competitive Politics
www.campaignfreedom.org
sparnell at campaignfreedom.org
Posted by Sean Parnell <http://www.campaignfreedom.org>  on 12.17.08 at 5.59

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