Supes Tackle Election Reform
Can board vote down shadowy hit committees?
After spending most of the year on the back burner, election reform is expected to be on the Marin Board of Supervisors' plate in October. That's good news for the prospects of tightening controls over elections for board seats. But a piece of legislation that slipped under the Sacramento radar has an equal prospect of casting a shadow on the hopes of local governments seeking to pull the reins on campaign spending.
The push toward limits on campaign spending for board seats got started after Novato made a big move last year and placed a cap of $400 on individual donations for seats on the City Council. The supervisors began looking at various proposals, including one that would put a cap of $1,000 on individual contributions to candidates for the board.
When Novato City Council members Pat Eklund and Judy Arnold ran for a seat on the Board of Supervisors, they each accepted contributions well in excess of the proposed $1,000 county limit. They broke no rules because there were no limits. But if the proposed cap had been in place, Arnold would not have received at least 12 large donations, and Eklund would not have received at least five.
The potential of future races for seats on the board to be marked by escalating costs and the possibility of a campaign-donation arms race raised concern among those who keep an eye on local elections, and among the supervisors. But Arnold, who won the seat in her election against Eklund, has a slightly different take.
"I have consistently said that reform should focus on independent expenditure committees." Those are the committees that can legally engage in campaigns without falling under the strict campaign limits to which a candidate or candidate's election committee must abide. An independent election committee (IEC) often pops up with an attack mailer during elections these days, often very close to election day. And voters often have no way of knowing the true face behind the attack mailer, other than an innocuous name on a brochure, something like "Citizens for Good Government."
It's not unusual for an IEC to mount a campaign effort for a local election even though the IEC and the people behind it are based hundreds or thousands of miles away from a candidate's district. It's impossible for voters to evaluate the information. But that information can, and does, have the ability to influence an election. And an IEC can raise money without falling under the strict spending-limit regulations that the candidates must meet. The tactic has proliferated from the federal level right down to elections across the country for seats on county boards and city councils.
Arnold says the county should enact election rules "so that we know who the independent expenditure committees are and who sent (election material). Sunshine and making sure candidates list all of their contributions, from zero on up, is the best reform there is. Setting caps and limits opens the door to abuses."
Arnold says she has an open mind about campaign reform proposals the Board of Supervisors will be discussing in October. Arnold and the other supervisors have refrained from taking a stab at campaign reform while they have been enmeshed in the update of the Countywide Plan, a task that Arnold says has consumed the supervisors' time.
Richard Rubin says the fact the supervisors are ready to return to the campaign-reform issue is hopeful. But he's a pragmatic optimist, a territory that sometimes verges on the cusp of pessimism. Rubin, who lives in Strawberry, is a Democratic activist. He's also president of a public affairs consulting firm, and he teaches at USF and UC Berkeley. He was the victim a few years ago of one of the most egregious IEC attacks the county has witnessed.
Rubin was running against Larry Russell for a seat on the board of the Marin Municipal Water District. The Saturday before the election, a nasty mailer turned up in the boxes of district voters. The mailer, little more than an out-and-out hit piece, unfairly tagged Rubin as a lobbyist for Enron, Exxon and Arco, not the best of credentials when running for a seat on the local water board. The hit piece, which also called him a "nightmare for the environment," was credited to the California Alliance for Renewable Energy Sources (CARES), an independent expenditure committee out of Southern California, which had no office, no telephone number, and seemingly no one who would logically care about which candidate ended up representing Division 5 on the Marin Water District board.
Rubin hired a Southern California gumshoe to determine who perpetrated the hit piece attack. In addition to the gumshoe route, the county district attorney looked at the case but could not make a clear connection between the mailer and any individuals who might have been behind the IEC mailer. Everyone associated with the race, including Russell's campaign consultant, claimed no knowledge of the last-minute hit piece.
Setting camping donation caps and spending limits on races for seats on the Board of Supervisors is a good idea, says Rubin, but he hopes that while the supervisors mull the possibilities, they will consider the "problem of independent expenditure committees." That, says Rubin, "is a much more vexing issue to get your hands around. They are pretty much rogue operations that (work) in the dark, and there are no constraints at the moment that can be imposed on them to prevent them from functioning. They are acting within the limits of the law, even though it strains credulity to believe that some of the things they are doing are either morally or legally sanctionable."
Although state law limits the county when it comes to the lengths it can go to tighten election rules, the county still can take substantive action. Rubin says the county can--and should--tighten disclosure and filing requirements, and impose more severe penalties for violations. "There are any number of things you can do," says Rubin who is calling for supervisors to pass a "full disclosure act."
Now that a new election cycle is under way, the IEC phenomenon is back. One of the latest IEC efforts in Marin, however, is not entirely anonymous. San Rafael voters recently received a mailer from an organization called Alliance for San Rafael Safety. The mailer slammed the record of Bob Marcucci, the former fire chief who is running for a seat on the City Council. Jonathan Frieman was the major contributor to the mailer, along with Larkspur resident Doug Kerr.
Marcucci has responded by saying the accusations in the mailer have no basis in reality. Frieman and others who contributed to the costs of the mailer, of course, disagree. While San Rafael voters must consider the accusations included in the mailer, they will not know who sent it unless they dig into campaign spending disclosure. The only name on the mailer is Alliance for San Rafael Safety, included in the return address.
That Frieman is behind the IEC contains more than a dash of irony. He's on the board of the California Clean Money Campaign, the group that's fighting to bring publicly funded elections to the state, and Frieman says the role of independent expenditure committees is cause for concern. "I don't like it, but I am using the Supreme Court decision that allows us to do this because (the court) equated money with speech in terms of politics." Frieman refers to the court's position that restricting campaign money is the same as restricting free speech. A contentious contention, to say the least.
Moira Brennan is the Northern California director of the California Clean Money Campaign. She also is the fianc? of Jonathan Frieman. "Moira and I have friendly little debates about (the use of independent expenditure committees)," says Frieman. "But when I see that an independent expenditure can be used in a positive way to bring out information that needs to be seen, I'm all for it." In another election cycle, Frieman sent out information that then-Marin Supervisor Cynthia Murray received strong backing from developers in her unsuccessful race for a seat in the state Assembly. When Frieman uses the IEC tactic, he says, he does it "with integrity." He says he rejects personal attacks.
In an added touch of irony, the California Clean Money Campaign is advocating for a system that would provide candidates who abide by clean-money rules with a bankroll to fight the kind of IEC mailer that Alliance for San Rafael Safety (Frieman) sent to San Rafael voters.
Capping campaign contributions can result in diminishing returns when it comes to campaign reform, say Frieman and others. If a candidate can receive only small contributions from a vast number of sources, the urge to use an IEC or two may become irresistible. The real answer, say Frieman, Rubin and many others concerned with the current state of the election landscape, is publicly funded elections. That might be the answer for the state, and for some counties and cities, but Marin cannot institute publicly funded elections unless it can change its status from a general law county to a charter county.
Charter counties and cities establish their own powers and authorities, whereas general law counties and cities receive their power and authorities granted by the state. Each system has advantages, but under general law guidelines, a city or county cannot institute publicly funded elections. (San Rafael and Corte Madera are charter cities.)
Brennan and the California Clean Money Campaign have been working to move AB 583 though the Legislature. It has passed the Assembly and now sits in the Senate waiting for a vote. If the Senate passes AB 583, and the Governor signs it, it would give California voters the opportunity to approve a pilot program for the 2010 election.
The race for Governor, along with one open Assembly seat and one open state Senate seat would receive public funds. Potential candidates would have to gather a sufficient number of signatures and small contributions to show they are legitimate candidates. If they meet the criteria, they can qualify for the public funds.
The California Clean Money Campaign is based on one already in place in Arizona. Other states also have moved to the publicly funded arena, including Connecticut, which voted to go clean money in 2005 and will begin its clean-money elections in 2008. The stets that have enacted publicly funded election laws have devised various ways to pay for clean-money expenses, says Brennan, including a fee on civil and criminal penalties, and the proceeds from selling impounded goods. In other words, she adds, there are ways to finance publicly funded elections without hitting the taxpayer hard in the pocketbook.
While AB 583 could have striking consequences for statewide races, it would have little impact on local races in Marin County and Marin towns. But another piece of legislation could have a major impact on local efforts to control campaign spending.
AB 1430 sailed right through the Assembly without any opposition and not a single negative vote. It seemed like a good thing at first. "At the time we were voting on it," says Marin's Assemblyman Jared Huffman, "the understanding was that it was focused on (preventing unfair restrictions) on organizations such as labor unions from educating their members and from conducting things like get-out-the-vote efforts. Obviously I don't want to see those groups limited in that respect." But after the bill sailed through the Assembly without opposition, Huffman says he and others realized they had passed something they wished they had not. Once out of the Assembly, "There were some concerns that it was worded so broadly that it could have the effect of preempting local campaign contribution limits. That is certainly something I would not want to do, and I wish I could have that bill back." So do many other members of the Assembly.
After flying past the Assembly well under the radar, AB 1430 won enough votes to get through the state Senate. (Marin's State Senator Carole Migden opposed it.)
AB 1430 now sits on the Governor's desk, waiting for his signature or his veto.
If the Governor signs AB 1430, local jurisdictions could be barred from passing any law that prohibits political communication between, say, political parties and their members, even though a specific candidate coordinates the communication. It would be a convenient end-run around caps on campaign contributions. AB 1430 also could affect the ability of charter cities and counties who wanted to rewrite their charters to allow publicly funded campaign laws, says Brennan of the Clean Money Campaign.
To illustrate the extent of the issue in the state, Brennan says that in the 2006 election cycle, political campaigns spent over $800 million across California.
"When you look at numbers like that, it looks like our elections have become a legalized form of bribery."
Contact the writer at peter@pseidman.com
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