Public Election Funding: An Assessment of What We
Would Like to Know
Kenneth R. Mayer
Department of Political Science
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Final draft of paper to be published in
The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics
Volume 11, Issue No. 3 (October 2013), p. 365-384.
Please note that this is a final draft submitted to The Forum, subject to slight last
minute editing by The Forum. Consult the published version for exact quotations.
This paper is one of a series commissioned as part the Campaign Finance Institute/Bipartisan Policy Center
Working Group on Money in Politics Research Agenda.
For more on the working group and to see other papers, visit:
http://www.cfinst.org/moneyandpolitics_scholarsAgenda.aspx
Public Election Funding: An Assessment of What We Would Like to Know
Kenneth R. Mayer
Department of Political Science
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Abstract
The implementation and expansion of public funding programs around the U.S. over the past decade raised the possibility of major changes in the financing of campaigns at the state and local level. Advocates claimed that these programs increased electoral competition, reduced the influence of campaign contributors and lobbyists, and change the distribution of political power. While there was evidence of a modest increase in competitiveness (primarily through reducing the number of incumbents who ran uncontested), the longer term pattern has shown no significant change in incumbency reelection rates, margins of victory, or legislature demographics. Claims of major policy change have also been overstated. The Supreme Court’s rejection of spending triggers for additional grant awards (in Arizona Free Enterprise PAC v. Bennett) makes full public funding programs less attractive, since public funding candidates are less able to keep pace with high-spending opponents or independent expenditures. Future research should focus on how these programs affect how candidates and legislators engage with the public.
Key Words: public funding, clean elections, electoral competition, state legislatures
Bio: Kenneth R. Mayer is Professor of Political Science and Affiliate Faculty of the Robert M. La Follette School if Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research has focused on public funding at the state level, election administration, and American politics. He has been active as an expert witness in campaign finance, redistricting, and voter-ID litigation in state and federal courts.
CFI/BPC Working Group on Money-in-Politics Research Agenda 1
Public funding programs have been around since the 1970s, with the first wave enacted
during the post-Watergate reform era. A second wave occurred over the past fifteen years with
the implementation of “Clean Elections” laws in Maine in 2000, Arizona in 2002, and
Connecticut in 2008. Several cities began programs as well, notably New York City, but also
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Albuquerque, and (for a while) Portland. These programs were
often prompted by scandal, at other times by a desire to cleanse politics of the effects of private
contributions, and occasionally by a normative impulse to open up the political process to
outsiders who would have difficulty tapping into existing fundraising networks.
My goal in this essay is to suggest ways that we can identify and analyze hypotheses
about the effect of public funding programs, and add nuance and empirical validity to our
understanding of the effects. Apart from summarizing what we already know, I will focus on
three things that we would like to know but so far do not, and how we might attack such
questions.
The first is why clean elections programs appear to have only a modest effect on electoral
outcomes. Even generously funded programs, such as Connecticut’s, have had at best a marginal
impact on election results or candidate demographics; the primary significant effect is a smaller
number of uncontested seats. Public funding does not, as far as we can tell, dramatically alter the
decision calculus of quality candidates thinking about entering the ring. Other measures of
competitiveness occasionally show significant change in the first few election cycles, and then
return to pre-reform levels. Does this reflect some kind of equilibrium in the electoral system?
Strategic adaptation among the different actors in the process? Or is it evidence of limits to the
effects of even a significant change to the campaign finance regime? Additional study of public
funding systems may lead to a better understanding of the complex interaction among candidate
quality, spending levels, strategic forecasts of the prospects of winning, and responses of the
other participants in the process. And it can give us a better idea of how much impact the
Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona Free Enterprise Club PAC vs. Bennett 564 U.S. ___ (2011)
to strike down spending triggers for matching fund awards will have on clean elections programs
in the long term.
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The second is whether public funding changes policy. Among reform advocates the
relationship between campaign contributions and policy decisions is axiomatic, although
political scientists have generally concluded that things are far more complicated than such direct
arguments allow. If advocates are correct, then changing the donor-candidate relationship, or
even taking private money out of the process, should lead to clear changes in elected officials’
behavior and decision making. Ultimately, this should mean that policy should change. Does
it? While there are many anecdotal accounts of policy shifts occurring in the wake of clean
elections programs (in particular), as yet there have not been rigorous studies that have
demonstrated significant effects on legislative, regulatory, or other policy outcomes.
The third is whether competitiveness is the right place to look for evidence that public
funding has an effect on the political system. Discrete electoral outcomes – the number of
candidates, victory margins, incumbency reelection – have the advantage of being unambiguous
and easy to measure. But after a decade of going over election results, we have likely extracted
as much information as we will be able to from the past seven cycles; additional data will
probably not dramatically alter the inferences already drawn. But there are other possibilities
that look not at candidates, but at voters and engagement: recent work examining the effect of
matching fund programs on the composition of the donor pool, how public funding changes the
way that candidates interact with the electorate; whether clean elections changes the way that
constituents relate to elected officials. Some initial analysis of New York City’s matching
system has shown significant changes in who donates money (and, by inference, whom
candidates look to for contributions), and in the engagement of poorer and more diverse areas of
the city.
The Basics
Public funding takes several forms: the most common comprehensive programs are fixed
grants to candidates that subsidize a portion of campaign spending; systems that match
qualifying contributions to candidates; or “clean elections” programs designed to fund all of a
candidate’s campaign spending, taking private fundraising out of the picture entirely. Most
programs provide funds directly to candidates, though some systems offer grants to political
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parties or tax credits for small contributors. Public funding programs exist at all levels of
government except congressional elections: in various states candidates for local office, state
legislatures, statewide office, or for judicial positions can qualify. Presidential candidates can
receive matching funds in the primaries and lump sum grants in the general election.
Internationally, public funding for political parties is the norm in industrialized democracies.
Table 1 shows the state programs that exist in 2013
These varied program types and locales hold the prospect of gaining leverage in
understanding how different campaign finance regimes affect electoral and policy outcomes.
Does public funding make elections more competitive? Make the candidate pool more diverse?
Change the way that legislators and candidates spend their time? Produce policies different than
what would be enacted without public funds?
The goals of public funding fall into two categories: process goals and policy goals.
Process-oriented reform is designed to change the underlying dynamics of elections, candidate
emergence, and voter and donor engagement with the electoral process. Process-effects change
the political process by themselves, even if they do not ultimately affect the decisions that
elected officials make. Spending more time interacting with voters and less time raising money
is a positive effect in its own right, as are improving public confidence in the political process
and enhancing representation. More competitive elections are important as they provide options
to voters and increase the likelihood that winners reflect the true preferences of the electorate.
Policy effects should (in theory) lead to changes in decision making as incumbents return their
focus to representation and to judgment about what’s best for the country or state or city, and
away from what’s best for their campaign contributors.
Most process reforms are intermediaries in the causal chain tying public funding to policy
outcomes. If changes in government membership occur, it matters partly because there are
different dimensions to representation, but mostly because of the presumption that a different set
of incumbents will make different decisions based on different motivations. If elections become
more competitive, that matters because incumbents will likely pay more attention to their
constituents and may make different policy decisions as a result, and because voters who can
kick the rascals out will have more control over elected officials. To reformers, reducing
dependence on large contributions or increasing the importance of small contributions is
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important in its own right, but also because it changes the way that incumbents relate to their
constituents or even who they regard as their main constituency.
Over the past decade, scholars have analyzed these programs to see what effect they have
on elections. On the whole, this work has found a modest impact on electoral competitiveness
and little effect on legislative membership. More recent studies have found that matching
systems can change the composition of the donor pool, increasing the value of small
contributions and enlarging the number of people who give to candidates. Surprisingly, scholars
have devoted less attention to the question of whether (or how) public funding changes policy;
while popular accounts claim that interest groups see their influence decline when legislators no
longer need campaign contributions, there have been few detailed studies.
One potentially promising line of inquiry focuses on judicial elections, and the effect of
campaign finance regimes on judges. The question here is not so much one of how large or
small is the effect of campaign contributions, but whether contributions have any effect on
judicial decision making. Judges perform a very different function than that of legislators.
While we might wish legislators to act in a Burkean manner, setting aside their parochial
concerns in favor of exercising judgment about what is best for society, nobody can be surprised
at the logrolling, favoritism, bias, and self-interested behavior that goes on in legislatures. We
do expect judges to be independent and impartial, in theory at least, even though they will often
fall short of the ideal.
Judicial elections aim at the precarious balance between judicial independence and a
degree of public accountability, and there is an active literature on whether such elections are a
good idea (Goldberg 2003; Horwitz 2008; Kang and Shepherd 2011). However, few would
contest the notion that judges should not show favoritism toward large contributors, or have a
financial stake in a case before them. In Caperton v. Massey Coal Co. 556 U.S. __ (2009), the
Supreme Court concluded that judges must recuse themselves when they have received large
campaign contributions from one party in a case before them. The difference between judicial
bias and legislative bias is the importance of “due process” in judicial proceedings, which
requires an absence of even potential bias. There is no analogous requirement in legislative
decision making, where influence is not a constitutional problem: “That speakers may have
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influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt.”
Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. ___ (2010), 43.
We also have a substantial body of evidence from other industrialized democracies,
where public funding is the norm.1 Other countries often have dramatically different electoral
systems, party structures, and norms and laws about campaign speech that make it difficult to
draw strong inferences about how the effects of public funding apply to the United States. A key
difference is that the U.S. has a candidate-based separation-of-powers system, while most other
democracies use a parliamentary system based on strong parties. Some of the claimed benefits
of strong public funding systems are contingent on a variety of other systemic factors that have
no counterpart in the U.S., such as “short electoral campaigns, widespread public ownership of
broadcasting stations, the banning of TV and radio political advertising outside the slots
allocated by the State” (Casoas-Zamora 2008, 19) , spending limits, prohibitions on certain types
of campaign activity, outright bans on private contributions to parties or candidates, and other
provisions that would be patently unconstitutional here. Still, we may be able to learn something
from those systems, particularly as to how groups and individuals adapt to restrictive rules as
they continue to protect and promote their political and economic interests and views (Koβ
2011).
Public Funding and Competitiveness
To date, most research on public funding has examined its effect on electoral
competitiveness. This has the advantage of focusing on measurable outcomes – numbers of
candidates and contested races; electoral margins; incumbency reelection rates – and makes use
of widely available data. The reasonable expectation is that public funding programs will
increase competition levels by removing entry barriers that deter many potential candidates from
even thinking about coming forward, and by making it easier for candidates (particularly
challengers) to amass the resources necessary to run a credible campaign. More contested races
1 According to the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, three quarters of nations provide some sort of
public funding, in the form of direct or indirect support to parties, or free television time. Since its origins in the 1950s “it has been adopted by almost all the stable democracies and became the dominate pattern among the new and emerging democracies in all regions of the world” (Mendilow 2012,1).
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and better funded candidates should, quite plausibly, lead to more competition and smaller
advantages for incumbents.
Any analysis of the effects of public funding on election outcomes confronts a substantial
endogeneity problem: a candidate’s choice to accept or decline public funding may depend on
the projected competitiveness of the election (the variable we are interested in studying).
Candidates who participate will do so for a variety of reasons: some because they have no other
option; some because they support the principle of public funding even if it lowers their chances
of winning; others because they think it gives them the best chance of winning. Some will
decline because they are ideologically opposed to public funding no matter the consequences for
their own electoral prospects; others because they conclude that private fundraising gives them
the best chance to win. It will be very difficult to distinguish races that are competitive because
candidates took public funding, from races where candidates took public funding because they
expected the race to be competitive.
If candidates accept public funding when they think the campaign will be close, we will
observe that contests with publicly funded candidates are more competitive than contests without
them. Conversely, if candidates accept public funding because they think they have no chance of
winning, and would not even bother to run without it, we will observe that public funding is
associated with less competitive outcomes; this is also what we will see if experienced high
quality candidates are more likely to decline public funding and low quality challengers are more
likely to take it. Even if public funding has no independent effect on competitiveness, we could
still see very strong (though false) relationship.2
The results show that clean elections laws in particular have increased some measures of
competitiveness in state legislative elections, primarily by reducing the number of uncontested
seats and slightly reducing the incumbency advantage (Mayer, Werner and Williams 2004;
Malhotra 2008; Werner and Mayer 2012). There is little evidence that contested elections are
2 Studies of campaign expenditures have the same difficulty, in that incumbents who are in electoral trouble tend to
spend more than those with no real opposition, leading to the simple (but inaccurate) conclusion that there is an inverse relationship between spending and votes. Accurate inferences require controlling for the expected competitiveness of the campaign; see Jacobsen (1978). In congressional elections, researchers can control for baseline competitiveness by examining candidate experience, prior service in elected office, or partisan balance in
the constituency. For state legislative elections, this information is much harder to find.
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more competitive or that incumbent reelection rates have declined. In Connecticut, despite high
grant levels and generous matching fund provisions that offered challengers up to six times what
they typically had spent in previous cycles, competition measures scarcely budged in 2008,
increased slightly in 2010, and then returned to pre-reform levels in 2012 except for the
percentage of incumbents in contested races which continued to rise (Figure 1). Other more
limited forms of public funding have even less of an effect. Kraus’s (2011, 162-166) study of
the New York City public funding program, which matches small contributions with in multiples
(now a 6 to 1 match for contributions up to $175) found that it had little effect on
competitiveness, and that early indications that it had stemmed from the huge number of open
seats in the 2001 election caused by term limits (37 out of 51 seats).
The results in statewide elections are even more attenuated. Evidence suggests that at
lower rungs on the electoral ladder, public funding can have a marginal effect on candidate
recruitment, but not as one moves up: as the stage gets larger, candidates tend to have more
experience and skills, and don’t need public funds as much as those lower on the food chain (this
is one reason why acceptance rates are lower in state senate races than in state house races; see
Werner and Mayer 2007). Statewide candidates generally have extensive political experience
and are well known, which means that they will have other skills that can offset financial
disadvantages. Primo, Milyo and Groseclose (2006) conclude that public funding has no
appreciable effect on the competitiveness of gubernatorial elections.
We are left with the puzzle of why the competitive effects are not larger, especially when
generous clean election systems are implemented. How could a doubling or tripling of
challenger spending not lead to closer elections? Why would competition increase in the short
term, but return to historical norms soon after? Perhaps some of the candidates who came
forward as a result of public funding were poor choices who might have been screened out if
they had to raise their own funds. Public funding might produce a higher number of lower
quality candidates, which would simultaneously explain the increase in contested races but no
change in competitive ones.3
3 An additional empirical difficulty is distinguishing the effects of clean elections from other changes in electoral
systems that occurred at (or around) the same time. Term limits took effect in Maine in 1996 and Arizona in 2000 (the years when legislators were first termed out). Arizona changed its redistricting process in 2000, creating an
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The introduction of multiple shocks to electoral systems may give us the ability to test
whether those systems have a type of equilibrium. The “hydraulic” theory of campaign finance
posits that political influence is similar to water, in that efforts to reduce it merely redirect it, as
“every reform effort to constrain political actors produces a corresponding series of reactions by
those with power to hold onto it” (Issacharoff and Karlan 1998, 1705). If that is an accurate
conceptual frame, we should see the effects more broadly as a general restoration of
longstanding channels of political behavior.
A broad theoretical literature suggests there are in fact equilibria in political systems.
Political structures tend to be enduring absent huge exogenous shocks; in a given system there is
usually a degree of regularity in outcomes, and change tends to occur incrementally. Individuals
adapt to particular institutional settings and behave in ways that are consistent with the payoffs
and incentives of those settings. Formal models suggest the best responses of one actor to the
strategies of other actors: other things being equal, it is always in a candidate’s interest to spend
more money rather than less (though this is more complicated if we have to specify how a
candidate obtains that additional money), and always in an incumbent’s interest to amass a large
war chest so as to appear invulnerable and discourage challengers from even arising. Almost
always, the candidate with more money wins, incumbents beat challengers, and experienced
candidates do better than political novices. These outcomes are easily explained by the structure
of the electoral process, and can properly be considered equilibria, at least in a rhetorical if not
formal sense.
Much of the literature on electoral system equilibria addresses the big picture: the number
of political parties, responsiveness to the median voter, where parties locate themselves
ideologically, based on the fundamentals of a particular system (Benoit 2004, 377). Public
funding is not so much an electoral system change, as a campaign process change. The logic of
reform is similar, but the consequences will almost certainly be less dramatic. Another way of
thinking about it is to postulate that legislators will vote for reforms when the political cost of
voting for the reform is less than the cost of not voting for reform.
independent commission to redraw state and congressional district lines after the 2000 Census. One of the requirements for the new Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission was to create competitive districts, and data support the conclusion that it did (McDonald 2006).
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Thinking about outcomes as equilibria points to the conclusion that a significant shock to
one variable may not lead to dramatic changes in outcomes. If this is a true equilibrium, it also
means that even after larger shocks the system should return to its original condition (or
something close to it). It would take a huge shock – moving from single member districts to
proportional representation, changing a presidential system to a parliamentary system, adopting a
new constitution – to fundamentally alter institutional arrangements and outcomes, and even here
we could expect participants to alter their behavior and adapt to the new circumstances in order
to promote their policy preferences.
What We Do Not Know: Policy Effects of Public Funding
The most important (and so far, unanswered) question is whether public funding affects
policy. If government decisions are influenced by campaign contributions (something that
reform advocates accept as an article of faith, although the substantive connection between the
two are more difficult to show), then removing private money from the process should lead to
major changes in policy, While it is easy enough to find emphatic claims of such effects, it is
much harder to trace policy shifts to public funds as a causal mechanism.
The implementation of clean elections in Maine, Arizona, and Connecticut offer a natural
experiment which holds the promise of showing how a significant shock to the political system
affected public policy. Each of these states went from a privately funded campaign finance
regime to a publicly funded system in which a large number of candidates and officeholders ran
without taking any appreciable private contributions. We can start to answer the question of
what happens when private money is largely driven out of the electoral process. If legislators are
beholden to their campaign contributors, we should see substantial changes in behavior and
outcomes once incumbents are freed from this dependence. If private money is the literal
currency through which political deals are conducted, public funding could rearrange political
influence away from narrow interests.
In this natural experiment, clean elections could affect legislative outcomes in several
different ways. It could be a sufficient condition for change, in that no other forces need to come
into play for a legislature to produce new policies. It could be a necessary condition, in that
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removing private money is not enough by itself, but allows other forms of lobbying and
influence to gain traction and push legislation through. If we observe significant policy change,
the logic of a natural experiment suggests that public funding could be the cause. At the same
time, it is important not to fall into the trap of post hoc fallacy of concluding that anything that
happened after the implementation of clean elections was caused by clean elections.
It is also possible that we will not observe much of anything, especially if the hydraulic
metaphor is accurate. Interest groups will not give up efforts to influence policy, but will shift
to new strategies if public funding (or any other campaign finance reform) cuts off existing
channels. The history of campaign finance reforms has demonstrated again and again how
political practices adapt to new rules and restrictions.
Proponents of public funding often point to specific policies adopted in the immediate
wake of clean elections implementation as clear evidence that the programs have wrested
influence from well-funded private interests. Outcomes as varied as prescription drug price
control and a bottle deposit law reform were attributed to clean elections laws in Maine and
Connecticut, respectively (Green 2000; Phaneuf 2012). A 2012 account went further, tracing
“in-state tuition for illegal immigrants, a transgender-rights bill, a major genetics research
initiative, a bipartisan job-growth package, and the nation’s first paid sick-leave mandate” to
clean elections in Connecticut (Phaneuf 2012, 54).
Are these accounts correct? A model built around a “contributions = policy” axiom may
be seductively simple, since any change in policy is by definition linked to changes in campaign
finance law. But it is more likely that the policy changes stem from a much more complicated
picture in which campaign contributions are only one part (see Mayer 2001).
To consider the instant cases, charges that pharmaceutical manufacturers had blocked
drug price controls in Maine but lost their grip on the legislature after clean elections must be
viewed in light of two things: the first is that the bill passed before the first publicly funded
election cycle took place; the second is the industry’s near total absence in state politics when the
bill passed. The first general elections under the clean elections program took place in
November 2000. The legislature considered the prescription legislation months earlier, in April
and May. Publicly funded incumbents could have been looking toward a future with fewer
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campaign contributions from the industry. But the fact that so few legislators took contributions
from the industry may have meant that money simply did not play a role.
Contributions from pharmaceutical manufacturers to all state candidates totaled $15,020
in the three election cycles prior to the enactment of the Maine Rx Program in 2000, or about
0.12% of the $12.3 million total contributed in those cycles.4 In the election cycles
immediately before and after the adoption of the law (1998 and 2000), drug companies donated a
total of $13,935 to twenty nine legislative incumbents in office when the bill was passed (state
parties received another $11,200), less than one-sixth of all members.
Far from being a potent lobbying force, the pharmaceutical industry was mostly absent
from state politics when the prescription drug bill passed. One account argued manufacturers
lost because they “failed to take the state seriously, [a] mistake that could cost them a fortune in
profits” (Mooney 2003, 18); in other words, the bill passed because the industry did not lobby
effectively. Activity continued to accelerate in the next few cycles, increasing to $28,850 in
2002, $42,000 (2004), and $76,260 (2006). Contributions could have risen as the industry
attempted to counter its declining influence once clean elections had taken hold. Or the industry
understood the threat to their bottom line only after the price control law passed.
Rather than a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, the prescription drug issue had been
percolating in the legislature for several years (Castellblanch 2003, 121). The issue became
more prominent when the Maine state employees union mobilized in response to a doubling of
their drug copays, alongside grass roots efforts and widespread public support. Despite receiving
only $250 from the industry in his two campaigns (about 0.01% of the $2.4 million he spent),
Governor Angus King threatened to veto the original legislation, and a scaled back compromise
version was passed and signed into law soon after (Castellblanch 2003, 124).
In Connecticut, a 1978 law imposed a 5¢ per bottle deposit on purchases of carbonated
beverages, chiefly soda and beer. When the bottles are returned to stores, individuals get their
deposits back, thus providing an incentive to return bottles rather than throw them out. Under
the law stores kept all deposits from all bottles not returned, an amount which by 2005 was about
$25 million annually. Environmentalists had long wanted to extend the law to noncarbonated
4 Data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
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beverages and require retailers to transfer all unrefunded deposits to the state. Repeated efforts
to enact these changes failed, according to Common Cause, because “[c]ampaign contributions
give the beverage lobby the leverage it needs to derail any legislative effort that threatens its
bottom line” (Common Cause 2005, 10).
After the first election held with public money, a bottle bill that expanded the types of
beverages included and included the transfer provisions passed in 2009. Viewed through a naïve
lens, the change is plausibly related to the implementation of clean elections and the number of
legislators who participated. Contributions from affected industries – liquor stores, grocers,
beverage companies – declined in the 2008 cycle, as public funds comprised 76% of
contributions to legislative candidates. Private contributions to legislative candidates declined
from $9.3 million in 2006 to $2.7 million in 2008, a 71% drop. At the same time, it seems
equally plausible that the changes were due to a more complex mix of factors, particularly the
prospect of obtaining millions of dollars each year for the treasury at a time when the state
budget was under significant pressure; Republican Governor Jody Rell was pushing for the bottle
deposit revenues as part of a deficit reduction plan. In addition, Democrats had their largest
legislative majorities in decades. Their 114-37 edge in the House was the largest since 1976, up
seven seats from the previous session. Powell’s (2012, 150-154) study of the influence of money
on 100 state legislative chambers ranked the Connecticut Senate at the low end of the scale (8th
from the bottom, where lower rankings indicate that money has less influence), while the House
was well below the median (ranked 33rd from the bottom), suggesting that the failure to change
the law before 2009 was due to something other than campaign contributions and lobbying from
the affected industries.
Clean elections laws certainly could have contributed to the passage of Maine’s drug
price control law or Connecticut’s bottle law. But in order accept that conclusion, we have to
answer some preliminary questions about the influence of campaign contributors. In Maine,
legislators are part time, lack any appreciable staff support, and at the time spent an average of a
few thousand dollars per campaign. In such a system, it’s not clear why candidates would be at
all susceptible to the influence of small contributions, though party leaders may have much more
sway. In Connecticut, arguments about the effect of clean elections on the bottle bill must
consider the importance of a Republican Governor’s support, budget pressure, and legislative
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inertia that could explain the inability to enact reforms earlier. None of this proves that public
funding was not a reason why policy changed, only that its effects were at most one part of a
more complicated story.
The literature on policy change and diffusion shows that most significant changes involve
a complex amalgam of factors: policy streams, issue entrepreneurs, diffusion, interest groups and
lobbying, mobilization, public opinion, path dependency, institutional capacity, bureaucratic
politics (see Weimer and Vining 2011, chapter 11). Campaign contributions may play a role in
this process, but are likely (at most) only one piece of a much more complicated puzzle.
Powell’s study of legislator perceptions of the influence of money found support for an
“investment model” of campaign contributions, in which interest groups give money in ways that
protect and advance their interests. Money may not affect specific votes, but it can shape
legislator priorities among some (though not all) incumbents (2012 202-3). Still, the effects are
modest at best, difficult to measure with much precision, and depend critically on institutional
structures and rules. As Baumgartner et al. (2009, 214) put it in their study of lobbying and
policy change: “Money matters in politics, there is no question. But other things matter as well,
and the direct correlation between money and outcomes that so many political scientists have
sought is simply not there.”
There are several possible reasons why the relationship between public funding and
outcomes might not be clearer. One is that private money does not affect specific policies in the
manner that advocates (and critics) claim, so that removing it from the system does not change
much. A second is that public funding has had an effect, but we still lack the appropriate
methods to measure it. A third is that the new rules have changed the system, but that
participants (both elected officials and interest groups) adapt in ways that protect their interests,
resulting in a blunting of the overall effects of the changes. Further investigations will need
more evidence to sort through these competing explanations.
The connection between policy results and public funding remains an open question.
What is notable about the lack of unambiguous evidence is that the adoption of clean elections
appears not to have changed the underlying difficulties in studying the influence of money on the
political process. Even with a substantial number of incumbents in several states who have not
taken any interest group contributions in the previous few cycles, it is still unclear whether
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policies have changed much at all, or if they have whether those changes are due to the new
campaign finance rules or other causal factors.
Public Funding and Participation
The weakness of any clear relationship between public funding and either electoral
competitiveness or policy outcomes suggest that scholars should look elsewhere for evidence of
effects. (This presumes, of course, that we accept the plausible premise that such a significant
alteration in the system should produce some change.)
Studies of the overall response to public funding show that the laws have little effect on
either public attitudes or behavior. Polling shows that while people often approve of the idea of
public election funding in principle (Weissman and Hassan 2011). But these views are likely an
artifact of public disillusionment with politics in general and support for just about any policy
intended to reduce special interest influence. Other studies have found little relationship between
campaign finance reforms – including public funding and clean elections – and public
confidence in government (Milyo 2012; Miller and Panagopoulos 2011). A 2010 GAO study
found that many people in Arizona and Maine were just as likely to say that special interest in
government had gone up since the clean elections law had passed than to say it had gone down
(GAO 2010, 72). A major reason for the lack of any clear relationship is that many people are
not even aware of their state’s campaign finance rules. An earlier GAO review of the recently
enacted clean elections laws in Arizona and Maine found that in 2002, 60% of Maine and 37%
of Arizona voting age citizens knew “nothing at all” about the clean elections laws that had just
gone into effect amid a surge of press coverage (GAO 2003, 71).
Participation in the $3 federal income tax check off, which funds the presidential public
funding program, has declined to historic low levels: in 2012, only 5.1% of filers checked the
box (which does not increase one’s taxes), down from 28.7% in 1980, and less than half the rate
in 2006.5 Public funding advocates frequently argue that public funding (and clean elections)
encourages people to vote, though there is no evidence of such an effect in the U.S. Some work
5 Federal Election Commission, Presidential Fund Income Tax Check-Off Status1992-2012, September 2012. 2012
figures are through July, though that does not affect the percentage of filers who participate. http://www.fec.gov/press/bkgnd/pres_cf/PresidentialFundStatus_September2012.pdf
CFI/BPC Working Group on Money-in-Politics Research Agenda 15
has even demonstrated that clean elections has actually reduced turnout (Milyo, Primo, and
Jacobsmeier 2011).
Most of the civic benefits of public funding have, we can safely say, been oversold, with
no discernible effect on turnout, perceptions of efficacy, or confidence in the political process.
However, there is one area where public funding has a material effect: it alters the
relationship between candidates and voters. One effect is obvious: clean elections candidates
spend very little time fundraising once they have qualified for public funds (Francia and
Herrnson 2003), and more time on other forms of voter contact and public engagement (Miller
2011).
More recent work shows that contribution matching programs that match small private
donations with public funds, often in multiples, alter the way that candidates raise money and
changes the donor pool. The largest and most established program is in New York City.
Between 1989 and 1997, contributions up to $1,000 were matched 1:1 with public funds, up to a
ceiling of 50% of a spending limit applicable to participating candidates. In 2001, this changed
to a 4:1 match for contributions up to $250, and in 2009 it changed to a 6:1 match for
contributions up to $175.
Analysis of donation patterns under contribution matching programs has shown a strong
effect on how candidates raise money, and on who donates. The logic is straightforward: with
New York City’s 6 to 1 contribution match, a $175 contribution is worth $1,225 to a candidate
(the initial $175 plus a $1,050 match). Small contributors become far more valuable, and
candidates have an incentive to raise money from people they might otherwise overlook.
The results are striking. Not only do participating candidates raise a larger share of their
money from small donors, they raise money from a broader and more diverse pool of
contributors. Malbin et al. (2012) found that compared to their privately funded counterparts,
publicly funded candidates raised more money from areas of the city with lower income and
higher minority concentrations. They conclude:
There can be little doubt that bringing more small donors into the system in New
York City equates to a greater diversity in neighborhood experience in the donor
pool. Increasing the number of small donors has been more than a means to dilute
CFI/BPC Working Group on Money-in-Politics Research Agenda 16
the power of the major givers. It has also led candidates to reach out to and
engage a more representative set of constituents as they raise their campaign
funds (2012, 13).
Expanding the donor pool is a net positive, particularly since contributing money is a
form of political participation that should result in additional forms of engagement (Schmitt
2007). Whether this broader participation has other effects on the political system – particularly
with respect to the possible impact on who gets elected and what candidates do once in office –
is a harder question to analyze, but important nonetheless.
The Future of Public Funding Programs
The adoption of “clean elections” in Maine in 1996 and Arizona in 1998 encouraged
reform advocates, many of whom anticipated that public funding programs would spread across
the country. That has not happened, and some areas have scaled back or eliminated their public
funding programs. Portland, OR rescinded its clean elections program in 2010 via a citywide
referendum. Wisconsin abandoned its system of fixed grants to participating candidates in 2011,
although the program had been moribund for decades as a result of paltry grant amounts. In
Minnesota, the Governor suspended the budget for the state’s contribution refund program in
2009, although the legislature reestablished the program beginning in July 2013. The public
funding system for U.S. presidential elections is not officially dead, but it is unlikely to have any
noticeable effect on future campaigns. With spending limits that are dropping to one-fifth of
what front-runners have spent in recent cycles, future participation will be limited to fringe
candidates and also-rans.6
6 In 2012, the presidential primary spending limit was $45.6 million, and the general limit was $91.2 million (a total of $136.8 million). Over the campaign, Romney spent an estimated $467 million; Obama spent $726 million even though he did not face any primary challenge. Obama spent $196 million in October 2012, nearly 50% more than he would have been permitted to spend in all of 2012 if he had taken public funds.
CFI/BPC Working Group on Money-in-Politics Research Agenda 17
In 2011, the Supreme Court’s rejected spending triggers7 for the award of additional
public grants to Clean Elections candidates. In Arizona Free Enterprise Club PAC et al. v.
Bennett et al. 564 U.S. ____2011), the Court held that spending triggers violated the First
Amendment because they were intended to level the electoral playing field and penalized
independent groups and privately funded candidates for exercising their First Amendment rights.
This has halted momentum for further expansion of Clean Elections programs, and could result
in the eventual demise of the programs already in place if candidates are less inclined to
participate.
The end of matching funds based on spending triggers has reduced participation in clean
elections programs, though not uniformly. Arizona stopped awarding them in 2010 under a court
injunction, while Maine and Connecticut stopped in 2012. In Arizona, 103 general election
legislative candidates took public funds in 2008 (including 31 incumbents), the last year of
triggered matching fund availability. In 2010, this dropped to 76 candidates (including 16
incumbents), and to 51 candidates (and 1 incumbent) in 2012. 8 This is the lowest level of
participation since the program’s beginning in 2000. Similarly, participation dropped in Maine
in 2012 to 242 general election candidates, down from 295 in 2010 and 303 in 2008.9 In
Connecticut, however, participation rose in 2012 with 257 general election legislative candidates
receiving grants, up from 240 in 2010 and 235 in 2008.10 The drops in Arizona and Maine
certainly suggest that candidates, especially incumbents, find clean elections less attractive
without the prospect of matching funds that could keep them competitive. But the increase in
Connecticut shows that factors beside the strictly utilitarian play a role in decisions to accept or
not.
Critics of public funding welcomed Arizona Free Enterprise Club PAC as a step towards
getting rid of such programs altogether. Their position is that public funding is harmful to free
speech rights, and that any policy effects are simply the result of reformers using government to
7 Once a privately funded candidate exceeded specified spending thresholds, raised money in excess of these thresholds, or benefitted from any independent expenditures, publicly funded opponents became eligible for additional grants to offset this private spending. 8 Data from Citizens Clean Elections Commission, http://www.azcleanelections.gov/election-data/search.aspx 9 http://www.maine.gov/ethics/pdf/Overview2000-2012forAppropriations02262013.pdf 10 2008 and 2010 figures from State Elections Enforcement Commission (2011, 21); 2012 figures from author’s
calculations.
CFI/BPC Working Group on Money-in-Politics Research Agenda 18
put its thumb on the scale to produce outcomes more to their liking (Gora 2010; Samples 2005;
Smith 1996).
No matter what happens in the short term with the various forms of public funding, we
will surely see such programs ebb and flow with the ongoing political disputes over influence,
corruption, and equality. Disputes over campaign finance are ultimately proxies for broader
controversies about who exercises political influence. Whether public election funding is a good
or bad policy is a broader question than whether it has an effect on particular outcomes or
processes. It is not my intent to cover the normative arguments about public funding. But
whatever one’s initial position, assessments should rely on a firm empirical foundation that can
distinguish what actually occurs under such programs (and what doesn’t appear to occur), rather
than on conjecturee.
CFI/BPC Working Group on Money-in-Politics Research Agenda 19
Table 1. State Level Candidate Public Financing Programs
State Candidates Eligible Type of Program Full/Partial
Funding
Arizona All statewide offices
Legislature "Clean Elections" Full
Connecticut All statewide offices
Legislature "Clean Elections" Full
Florida Governor
Cabinet members
Contribution Matching
Grants Partial
Hawaii
Governor
Lt. Governor
Legislature
Off. Hawaiian Affairs
Fixed Grants Partial
Maine Governor
Legislature "Clean Elections" Full
Maryland Governor
Lt. Governor
Contribution Matching
Grants Partial
Massachusetts All statewide offices Contribution Matching
grants Partial
Michigan Governor Contribution Matching
Grants & Fixed Subsidy Partial
Minnesota All statewide offices
Legislature Fixed Subsidy Partial
New Jersey Governor Contribution Matching
Grants Partial
New Mexico Public Regulation Commission
Statewide judicial offices "Clean Elections" Full
North Carolina
Judicial offices
Auditor
Superintendent of Public
Instruction
Insurance Commissioner
"Clean Elections" Full
Rhode Island All statewide offices Contribution Matching
Grants Partial
Vermont Governor
Lt. Governor "Clean Elections" Full
West Virginia State Supreme Court (pilot
program in 2012) "Clean Elections" Full
Source: National Conference of State Legislatures, 2013; Hawaii modified by author.
CFI/BPC Working Group on Money-in-Politics Research Agenda 20
0.0
10.0
20.0
30.0
40.0
50.0
60.0
70.0
80.0
90.0
100.0
1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012
Pe
rce
nta
ge
of
Incu
mb
en
ts
Competition Levels - CT State House Elections
Reelection
Major Party Opposition
Competitive
CFI/BPC Working Group on Money-in-Politics Research Agenda 21
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