A way to equalize cash disparity between parties
By: Hank Kalet
Greg Puliti is planning to push the "ultimate campaign finance reform" in Lawrence Township.
The township councilman is proposing that Lawrence follow on the heels of the state pilot "clean elections" program and have the township pay for local political campaigns.
The idea is to move past the current craze for pay-to-play reforms and the layers upon layers of new regulations and restrictions and create parity among candidates.
"If the people truly want the ultimate campaign finance reform, this is it," he said at a Lawrence council meeting last week. "It puts all candidates on the same playing field. One candidate cannot outspend another."
It’s an idea whose time has come and one that I’d like to see South Brunswick and Monroe explore especially with the amount of money being raised and spent in these communities and the almost obscene cash disparity that currently exists between the two parties.
In the four general election campaigns in South Brunswick between 1998 and 2004 (official numbers for 2006 will not be released until next week), the two parties spent more than $550,000 total, with the Democrats responsible for nearly four-fifths of the total.
In Monroe, the disparity is even greater, with the Monroe Democrats raising upwards of $324,000 in 2004 and 2005 and their Republican counterparts boasting a near-empty bank account.
The cash disparity has its effect, amplifying the major parties’ strength in both towns and making it easier for the major parties to attract donors and more difficult for the GOP a double-whammy that perpetuates one-party politics.
Given this, it seems pretty obvious that something needs to be done to level the fundraising playing field and that something is a local version of the state’s "clean elections" pilot.
Under the state program, tried in two legislative districts in 2005 and expected to be expanded to six in 2007, candidates are required to collect a set number of qualifying donations called "seed money" in $5 and $10 increments. Candidates who reach the threshold would then get a set amount of money from a state "clean elections" fund to run their campaigns. In exchange, the candidates would be prohibited from accepting additional private contributions and would have to abide by spending limits.
Candidates could choose not to participate, continue to raise money from private sources (contribution limits would remain in place) and spend what they want. However, they would need to explain to voters why they opted out of the system.
In addition, the additional money also would be made available if a clean-elections candidate is running against someone who chooses not to participate or if other "independent expenditures" are made against a clean-elections candidate.
There are other options, as well, such as a model ordinance drafted by the campaign reform group Citizens’ Campaign. Under the ordinance, towns would provide matching funds and/or in-kind services Web site or cable TV access, for instance in exchange for candidates abiding by spending limits.
To date, however, no town has opted to even explore the public-finance route.
Mr. Puliti, however, thinks it’s time. He is proposing that Lawrence create a bipartisan committee to review campaign spending and come up with recommendations. The committee would have nine members two Democrats and two Republicans (including the chairmen of both parties), representatives from the Green and Libertarian parties and three at-large appointees. The committee would calculate the "reasonable costs" of running a local campaign for signs, palm cards, mailings, newspaper ads. The committee also would look at the various ways of putting a "clean elections" system in place.
The committee would then issue a report and the township would hold a referendum.
He told me Monday that he was open to whatever the committee brought back, but that he thinks it’s time to move away from the piecemeal approach to the seemingly intractable issue of funding political campaigns.
"Here we’re trying to put layer on top of layer on top of layer and the counties are doing it, too," he said. "But there are always loopholes and you could almost go in any ELEC report and see an I that was not dotted and T that was not crossed."
Rather than continually trying to plug the loopholes, he said, it is time to try something different, to take all the private contributions out of the system.
Overall, he said, he expects the entire program to cost between $30,000 and $36,000 annually about one-tenth of 1 percent of the Lawrence budget.
That’s not a lot of money to clean up the process, he said.
I’d have to agree.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. He can be reached via e-mail, or through his web log, Channel Surfing.