Corzine should commit now to public financing

PACKET EDITORIAL, Nov. 15

By: Packet Editorial
   Now that the dust has settled on the most expensive — and, perhaps not coincidentally, the nastiest — gubernatorial campaign in New Jersey history, it seems an appropriate time to take stock of the state’s election laws.
   Specifically, it’s time to recognize that the election-law reforms enacted over the past 30 years or so have been very effective in one particular area — requiring disclosure of the sources and the amounts of campaign contributions. But, as this year’s race for governor demonstrated, they have been decidedly less effective in another important area — limiting campaign expenditures.
   The push to reform New Jersey’s election laws came out of the Watergate era. Up until the early 1970s, candidates for public office and contributors to their campaigns didn’t have to tell anybody anything about how much money they were spending or where it was coming from.
   The Campaign Contributions and Expenditures Reporting Act of 1973 changed all that, requiring candidates and campaign committees at the state, county and local levels to file reports listing contributors, contributions and expenditures. (The law was later amended to place limits on individual contributions, require political action committees to register, and compel contributors to list their occupations and employers.)
   Just as important, the law provided partial public financing for gubernatorial campaigns. Under the public-financing scheme, the state would match every dollar raised by gubernatorial candidates from private sources with two dollars of public funds, up to a maximum specified by law. Gubernatorial candidates who accepted public financing also agreed to a ceiling on campaign expenditures.
   This law worked very nicely from the 1977 gubernatorial election, in which incumbent Democrat Brendan Byrne and Republican challenger Ray Bateman both accepted public financing and abided by the spending limitations, right up to 2001, when Democrat James E. McGreevey and Republican Bret Schundler did likewise. In the interim, every major-party gubernatorial candidate, including two — Thomas H. Kean and Christine Todd Whitman — who enjoyed a substantial advantage in personal wealth over their opponents, chose to abide by these rules.
   This year, Jon Corzine and Doug Forrester didn’t. Instead, they spent obscene amounts of their own money — most of it on mudslinging television commercials that reached more voters in New York and Pennsylvania than New Jersey. They were permitted to spend as much as their burgeoning bank accounts could bear because both eschewed public financing, which is their right under the law. And, because the U.S. Supreme Court has held that candidates have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of their own money on their own campaigns, there is nothing the New Jersey Legislature (or the U.S. Congress, for that matter) can do about it.
   Does this mean only millionaires will run for governor of New Jersey in the future? We hope not. We hope this particular campaign — which, we hasten to add, brought out a smaller percentage of registered voters than any gubernatorial race in history — proves to be an anomaly. We hope New Jerseyans still believe that public financing is one of the keys to fair, honest elections. And we hope the example set by the successful candidacies of Govs. Kean and Whitman will warn wealthy candidates who might be tempted to reject public financing — especially if their opponents accept it — that they do so at considerable political peril.
   At the risk of tilting at windmills, we would ask Gov.-elect Corzine — who, we assume, may be interested in serving more than one term — to commit himself now, even before he takes office, to accept public financing in 2009 if his opponent does the same. This sort of gesture won’t undo the damage he and Mr. Forrester did during their spending spree of the past few months, but it would go a long way toward restoring public confidence in New Jersey’s campaign-finance laws.