Jack Davis and the Death of Clean Elections
By Historical Pessimist, Daily Kos (Reprinted from Metro Justice June-July Newsletter)
About a month ago, Kos wrote a front page entry entitled “Crazy Jack Davis and the Woes of the Millionaire.” In it, he described how Jack Davis, who ran against Tom Reynolds twice for the NY26th Congressional seat, was taking his lawsuit against the “Millionaire’s Amendment” section of BCRA (otherwise known as McCain-Feingold) all the way to the Supreme Court. Talk about bad optics: here was a supposed Democrat arguing that it should be easier for wealthy people like him to buy a seat in the people’s House.
The Supreme Court heard the case last month, and the tea leaf readers in the press suggest that the oral arguments indicate Davis is probably going to win. That’s bad enough, but now it appears the case contains a Trojan Horse which could end up invalidating the public financing systems of states like Maine and Arizona, which have adopted them with great success.
According to the Brennan Center’s Laura MacCleery’s piece (Protecting the Rights of Millionaires) in The Nation, the sticking point in Davis’s case could be the “triggering” provision of the Millionaire’s Amendment that provides opponents of self-financing candidates the ability to raise larger donations than usually permitted, if the self-financier puts more than a certain amount into his or her own campaign.
This is a potentially devastating issue, as Clean Money Clean Election states depend on a similar trigger provision to make their publicly- financed systems viable.
Laura MacCleery explains that no one would participate in a publicly financed campaign if it meant unilateral disarmament.
As the Brennan Center for Justice pointed out in an amicus brief, in upholding the law a federal three-judge panel drew upon the provision’s similarity to “trigger provisions” used in systems of public funding for elections in several states. These provide participating, publicly-funded candidates with more money to match either the spending of a nonparticipating opponent or hostile independent spending, up to a pre-set threshold. Matching funds are critical to ensuring that the voluntary spending limits on which public funding is conditioned do not make participating candidates into sitting ducks in the face of massive outspending by their opposition
At least one amicus brief filed with the Court takes clear aim at such measures. It is possible that a few of the more conservative Justices may craft a decision that knowingly or unknowingly imperils this innovative approach. If they do so, they will threaten public funding as a strategy for reducing politicians’ over-reliance on wealthy corporate special interests.
The fact that this is happening because of someone in my district who calls himself a Democrat really kills me. That’s quite a Democratic two-fer, isn’t it? Make it easier to buy a seat and kill public financing – two birds with one stone.
Everyone, no matter where he/she might be from, knows Albany is a morass that is in desperate need of reform. Public financing (which the current governor is behind) is the only solution out there to cleaning up this mess, and NY’s own Jack Davis might end up killing this promising solution in the cradle. ■
