Marin Needs Well-Designed Clean Campaign Law
NOVEMBER'S negative campaign against San Rafael City Council candidate Bob Marcucci was the most recent example of Marin's slide toward dirty politics. Now the county Board of Supervisors is poised to create a model clean campaign ordinance that may cap campaign contributions.
It's a good move, but it would be naive to proceed without getting the advice of practical political types to make certain that the effort doesn't cause more problems than it cures.
Since the 1970s political reform era, Marin has enjoyed a reputation for clean, issue-based politics. The early 1970s was a time of transition away from a semi-rural cow county with an entrenched courthouse gang to good-government suburbanites who refused to tolerate petty corruption and sleazy campaigns.
That reformist tide may be receding. Anti-intellectual negative campaigns fueled by misleading political hit pieces have become common. Most Marinites are appalled and profess disgust, but practitioners of these dark political arts understand that negative politics works. Much of this junk emanates not from opposing candidates, but from "independent expenditure committees." These groups theoretically are unconnected to any specific campaign but quietly do dirty deeds to advance their own agenda and pocketbook.
Their effectiveness is indisputable. Look at what happened to Marcucci. San Rafael's retired fire chief had a sterling reputation until slimed in a series of fanciful political hit pieces orchestrated by the city's firefighters union. To many voters, the result was predictable: "Where there's smoke, there must be fire." While the firefighters emerged with their own tarnished reputation, they accomplished their goal. Marcucci was toast.
Most reforms are written by well-intentioned citizens with little understanding of practical politics. The true political experts are professional consultants. The worst know how to legally skirt clean campaign laws and fund-raising limits. The best realize that ill-considered reforms bring unintended consequences inadvertently making matters worse.
The very rise of independent expenditure committees is a prime example of an unexpected result derived from good intentions. The device came to prominence when restrictions were placed on contributions to individual candidates. Special interests learned that "independent" committees could raise unlimited sums to finance mudslinging unrestrained by the scruples of candidates concerned about their own reputations.
Marin has a number of respected political consultants with honorable statewide reputations. Mill Valley's Don Solem on the Democratic side and Sausalito's Joe Shumate on the Republican know the ins and outs of the business. Such veterans can assist in crafting effective ordinances without unwanted pitfalls. They also know that reformers' zeal must respect the First Amendment's free speech guarantees.
County supervisors also might involve San Rafael's Jonathan Frieman. Frieman you say! The same Frieman who helped finance tacky hit pieces aimed at Marcucci, Cynthia Murray and Joe Nation? Yes, but also the same Frieman who is vice president of the California Clean Money Campaign. He certainly knows negative campaigning, but now with his involvement with the Clean Money movement he seems to be saying, "Stop me before I strike again." Why not do just that and tap his acknowledged intelligence to find ways to discourage the very strategies that he pioneered?
If this trash is to stop, we need to involve not only idealists, but pragmatic politicians who understand the business.
See the article on Marin Independent Journal website
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