Why We Oppose Taxpayer-financed Political Campaigns

While most of the media attention has been focused on the attempt to create support for taxpayer-financed campaigns, there are strong reasons not to rush down this misguided path.

While I, too, am concerned about the escalating costs of political campaigns at every level, many of those who support taxpayer-financed campaigns are out to eliminate the influence of the business community and those who have been successful in life from the political arena.

Nothing in any taxpayer-financed campaign plan I have seen would diminish the influence and day-to-day political activity of the labor unions, teacher organizations, state and local government associations, plaintiffs' attorneys, foundations, and other special interest groups. They could continue to assign employees to do the grassroots work of the campaigns on a daily basis, such as the door-to-door distributions of campaign literature, staffing the important telephone banks to identify and turn out the vote, put up the yard signs, haul voters, address envelopes, etc.

The supporters of the taxpayers' financing campaigns would say that the business community could also assign employees to perform these tasks for candidates of their choice, but that demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the business world. Employees have to be at work most of the time for the businesses and industries of this state to thrive and flourish or even to keep their doors open. Many people forget that businesses must make a profit to survive. Yes, I wish that more business people could seek public office or at least participate in the day-to-day grassroots political activities, but that is not the real world.

Supporting the taxpayer-financed campaign scheme is an easy way out of the growth in the campaign spending situation. I have given this issue considerable thought over the years. Most "solutions" tend to favor the wealthy candidates because the courts have ruled that there can be no limits placed on how much they can give to their own campaigns. I agree with this ruling. Other suggested reforms which try to place limits on spending result in favoring incumbents because of the many free advantages they possess.

There are less radical approaches than the taxpayers paying for campaigns they don't support. Political campaigns in England last approximately six weeks. Perhaps our primaries should be moved to September. Single-member districts in legislative, school board, city council, and county commissioner races would help reduce costs. Four-year terms for all officials would go a long way toward reducing time campaigning and money being spent. Raleigh businessman Jim Goodmon is performing a magnificent public service by donating some broadcast time to top statewide candidates. Hopefully, this generous gesture will be adopted by other news media. Of course, the media already provides a considerable amount of free news coverage. Government should not unduly reduce the media's ability to make a profit off political candidates although broadcasters charge the lowest rate for political ads.

I firmly believe that this "crisis" is largely a result of media-hype and the desire of many liberals and populists to create a crisis which they want to solve on the backs of the hard-working taxpayers. When citizens are polled as they leave the voting booths (even in reform-driven New Hampshire) or when they are polled in the "Your Voice, Your Vote" project in our state, campaign reform barely registers and is seldom mentioned in "open-ended" questions. Of course, if the question is "Do campaigns cost too much?" the response is usually "yes." In my many years of public speaking, I have never been asked a question about campaign costs. The public is simply not interested, but they will be if they find out some politicians are intent on spending their money for political campaigns — tax money which more appropriately could be spent on computers and textbooks; repairs to crumbling, leaking buildings on our college and university campuses; more employees for our mental health and court systems; and other many worthy uses of tax funds.

Finally, I submit this is not the "crisis" some claim it is. Americans spend more on potato chips each year than they do on all political campaigns, ranging from school board races and other local races to state campaigns to all federal races.

Taxpayer-financed campaigns are not the way to reform the process. We should continue to seek more reasonable solutions to a growing problem.

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