Too Little, Too Late
I was talking with a political friend yesterday, someone who was involved in the original fight to establish public campaign financing in Connecticut. To him, Lamont’s decision to forego the CEP is momentous; to me, not so much. But the conversation is foregrounding the fact that, for a statewide race with over 800,000 eligible voters, the primary grant ($1.25 million) is simply not very much money.
On its own, the grant would probably pay for about 7 mailings to the households where eligible voters live. But staff, office expenses, consultant fees, and the like will eat into that — take a look at Malloy’s January filing. The campaign had 3 staffers for most of the fall quarter, and took on another two in December. Their fundraising operation brought in $71,000, but the campaign spent $162,000 over the same period. Operating expenses would at least double in the heat of the summer campaign, so we’re now talking about a campaign that optimistically has $900,000 to communicate with voters. At best, 5 mailings with no TV advertising and no intensive field operation. Rough.
But the bigger problem, I think, is that this grant of public money won’t even become available until candidates get nominated at the end of May. At the current rate, Malloy will run out of money near the end of March. And that’s assuming that he never actually declares as a candidate (about half of the funds he’s raised are “non-qualifying” dollars, which are the portion of any large donation above the $100 limit that declared, participating candidates can raise). If he had declared as a candidate on January 1st, the money would have run out by the middle of last week. Just when the campaign will need to ramp up (the weeks leading up to the convention), the well will run dry, the staff either sent home (problematic) or working on spec and IOUs (probably illegal). Any qualifying funds over $250,000 that a candidate raises will have to go right back to the Citizen’s Election Program as soon as the candidate applies for the grant. That is, simply put, not an acceptable or sustainable program for operating statewide campaigns.
One way to correct this problem, assuming that the CEP is allowed to stand by the courts and is fixed by the legislature, would be to move the convention dates way up. Unfortunately, that would raise real hurdles for candidates that announce in the same year as the election: a March 1 convention would make it nearly impossible for someone like Glassman (who announced recently) or Marconi and Figueroa (who don’t have strong statewide profiles) to get 2500 donations in just a few months.
Maybe the way to fix it would be to untether the candidate qualification process from the conventions entirely. The process right now is divided: qualifying as a candidate requires that you get 15% of the delegates at a convention or 5% of the voters in the district to sign a nominating petition, but the finance laws are an entirely separate set of regulations. A closer integration of the candidate laws and finance laws might recognize a candidate’s qualification for a primary from the date they submit a completed application for public financing or receive the required number of delegate votes or voter signatures. That would make them eligible for the full grant immediately; making them wait around for a formality doesn’t accomplish much apart from making it harder to participate in the program.
For candidates that have qualified, declaring someone an official candidate at the point of their successful qualification for the CEP would put an end to the ridiculous “exploring candidate” tap-dance that they’re forced to perform to keep their campaigns from completely folding in the months before the convention. Conventions would still decide who was the endorsed candidate, and could nominate candidates who hadn’t finished their fundraising.
A fix like this wouldn’t solve the “too little” problem, but it would have the double benefit of keeping the program relevant in the doldrums before the conventions while changing the law to recognize that someone (at any level) who can meet the public financing is, in fact, a real candidate. 300 donations are easily worth 1500 signatures. Let’s hope that the law (if it remains on the books after the Second Circuit rules) continues to evolve to reflect the realities of modern campaigns. Even though we’re just now seeing it in action for the first time in statewide races, it’s clear that the rules are already well behind the times.