Cleaning Up California's Politics

Next week, California legislator Loni Hancock will courageously tell the Assemblyman Lloyd Levine of Van Nuys and other members of the Assembly Elections Committee that the legislature needs to aggressively overhaul the campaign finance system that put each and every one of them in office. Hancock serves as a needed reminder that not all politicians act like greedy little pigs, but that some of them are out there fighting to make things better for the rest of us.

It is easy to be cynical about politicians these days. When citizens see legislators getting flown to Hawaii by loan shark corporations like Ameriquest, it's understandable that only a minority of Californians have approved of how the legislature is doing its job according to the Field polls over the last four years. Last September, a Public Policy Institute of California poll found a mere 22% of state residents felt that legislators do an excellent or good job of looking out for their interests.

When he was a candidate, Arnold Schwarzenegger seemed to understand why people are skeptical about politicians -- it's all about the money, the special interest money. He promised us that he would clean up Sacramento and sweep the special interests out of town. Never one to be on the set without a prop, he toured the state with a broom telling us that he was the man to clean up politics.

It's funny how things change. Now that he's in office, Governor Schwarzenegger spends his time in fancy hotel ballrooms, often not even in California, seeking to raise record-shattering sums of money. We thought we'd seen the all time champion of money-grubbing in Gray Davis, but Schwarzenegger unbelievably raised twice as much money in his first year in office as Davis did.

There are a lot of things we need to fix in California politics, but Loni Hancock has put her finger on one simple reform that has a proven track record of success. The idea is to provide public funds to candidates who are willing to go cold turkey and completely abandon private fundraising. The state would give qualified "clean money" candidates enough money to compete with candidates who still choose to rake in big donations from private interests.

I must admit, I was a little skeptical when I first heard the idea of giving away our tax dollars to politicians so that they can bombard me with sleazy attack ads when I'm trying to watch TV.

But, then I heard from folks in Arizona, where they've tried out this clean money system and found that it works pretty well. It actually gives someone a fighting chance if they decide to run for public office without the help of fat cats. That's a big deal. It means we don't have to argue about which interests are special interests and which ones aren't. It means regular folks can run for office, and run a competitive campaign against the traditional candidates who'll say anything and do anything so long as it gets them a campaign check. And it doesn't even cost that much.

We could provide full public financing for our state elections for less than $6 per Californian. The special election Arnold wants to call for this fall could cost us about $70 million. Combine that with the roughly $60 million it cost to administer the recall election and that's about the same amount of money it would take to rid our politicians of their dependence on campaign cash through public financing. Fairly administered elections are worth paying for, but so are fairly run campaigns.

All this reform needs is a majority vote of both Houses before it is put before the voters as a ballot question, so the legislature cannot blame Governor Schwarzenegger for blocking it. The real test will then be if the Governor puts his multiple ballot committees to work backing this reform once it gets to the ballot. That will be his opportunity to show that his broomstick was more than just a prop and his promises were more than empty rhetoric.