Litigation

Matching Funds in AZ Public-Finance Law Upheld

By Peter Hardin

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the matching funds provision of Arizona’s public financing system for statewide and legislative offices.

The ruling was “a rare win for supporters of reasonable campaign finance regulation,” scholar Rick Hasen wrote in his Election Law blog. The losing side in the 3-0 decision planned an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

At issue is a provision that provides additional taxpayer dollars to publicly-funded candidates if their privately-funded opponent exceeds a spending limit set by the state.

District Judge Roslyn Silver had ruled the provision unconstitutional, saying it violated the First Amendment because it causes candidates without public funding  to limit their own campaigning, fundraising and  spending of their own money.

The Ninth Circuit disagreed. “We conclude that the matching funds provision of the Act imposes only a minimal burden on First Amendment rights,”  its opinion said.

“No plaintiff . . . has pointed to any specific instance in which she or he has declined a contribution or failed to make an expenditure for fear of triggering matching funds,” the court said, according to an Arizona Republic article.

Arizona’s public financing system is needed to prevent a perception of corruption, the court added:

“AzScam, in which legislators literally sold their votes for cash bribes, was just one of many substantial, wide-spread, and highly-publicized political scandals that Arizona experienced in the late 1980s and 1990s….The more candidates that run with public funding, the smaller the appearance among Arizona elected officials of being susceptible to quid pro quo corruption.”

The opinion by Judge A. Wallace Tashima also said the public funding program had drawn a high rate of participation, between 52 and 67 percent of candidates since 2002, and that bolstered the state’s interest in fighting corruption, according to a Metropolitan News-Enterprise article.

West Virginia recently became the fourth state  to adopt public financing for state judicial elections. You can read about its law, and about debates over legality of public financing plans for judicial elections, in Gavel Grab; you also can read more about the Arizona controversy in an earlier Gavel Grab post. Another source of more information about public financing is a JAS issues page on the topic.

Full post as published by The Gavel on May 24, 2010 (boomark / email).