Litigation

Essayist Explores Rationale for FL Public Financing

By Peter Hardin

After a week with two major federal court decisions on public campaign financing cases (see Gavel Grab), it’s easy sometimes to let the scorekeeping drown out the issues that are at stake.

Robyn E. Blumner has written a column in the St. Petersburg Times that spells out the reasoning behind that state’s “matching” funds provision in its public financing law, for example, and that argues the statute ought not be interpreted as infringing on First Amendment free speech rights.

Blumner gives the examples of two rich Floridians who are aiming for public office: a Republican running for governor and a Democrat who wants to be a U.S. senator, Rick Scott and Jeff Greene, respectively.

Neither has held elective office, and “There is no better evidence that money animates politics ? in the way that Frankenstein’s monster was animated? than seeing complete unknowns transformed into viable statewide candidates simply by writing their own checks.”

Where is the fairness, Blumner asks, when a wealthy candidate can spend from a bottomless pocketbook, while a cash-strapped candidate can’t keep up and faces dollar limits on money from outside donors? Public financing, in this case, provides a way to bring about fairness because taxpayer dollars are distributed to a participating candidate when a self-financing candidate spends over a certain limit, she explains.

Then the column proposes to look at the Florida law in light of the Supreme Court’s 2008 Davis v. FEC decision throwing out the so-called “millionaire’s amendment” in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. That provision boosted limits on contributions to a candidate for congress if a wealthy opponent spent more than $350,000 from his own pocket on his campaign. Here is Blumner’s take:

“The court suggests that free speech is violated when a law dissuades rich candidates from spending their own money on campaign speech because it triggers a special benefit for their opponent. Such a sweeping view would devastate public financing laws that subsidize non-self-financing candidates.”

Maybe the public campaign financing model doesn’t trample on the First Amendment even in the wake of Davis, she suggests. She cites Justice John Paul Stevens’  dissent in that case saying the millionaire’s amendment “quiets no speech at all” and just aids an opponent “in his attempts to make his voice heard” ? an “amplification,” according to Justice Stevens, that “in no way mutes the voice of the millionaire, who remains able to speak as loud and as long as he likes.” Blumner concludes:

“Public financing laws have been in place for a long time without being a bar to millionaires entering politics. Without those laws, millionaires gain an unfair advantage, reinforcing the notion that high office is the province of the rich, and putting another nail in democracy’s coffin.”

To learn about public financing of judicial campaigns, check out the JAS issues page on the topic.

Full post as published by The Gavel on July 19, 2010 (boomark / email).