Chapel Hill is the first NC municipality to use taxpayer-financing of campaigns. Only two out of the 12 candidates decided to take the political welfare.
The system is unconstitutional just like the judicial and Council on State taxpayer-financed campaign systems because of the rescue fund component in the program. Candidates that don’t want to abuse their positions and take the money of fellow citizens for their campaigns are punished for being ethical.
If they raise money beyond a certain threshhold amount, the subsidized candidate receives rescue funds to equalize the funds between the candidates. As a result, the ethical candidate doesn’t want to raise too much money and thereby exercise his free speech rights because additional money will be provided to help his opponent.
Usually, most candidates in taxpayer-financed campaigns decide to take political welfare because the penalties are so severe they have little choice. Amusingly, the proponents of taxpayer financing claim that these political welfare programs are working because a lot of candidates take the money. If this is their measure of success, they are going to have a hard time explaining the results in Chapel Hill where candidates have rejected the system despite the rescue fund penalties.
Some quick points for folks in Chapel Hill
1) Even if you vote against a candidate that has taken taxpayer dollars, you will still be a contributor to his/her campaign because your tax dollars are helping to subsidize the candidate. If you find the candidate repugnant or immoral, it makes no difference.
2) Your hard-earned dollars are being used by politicians for their own personal uses–they take from you and use the money for their own personal political aspirations.
3) Money is taken from the town’s general fund to subsidize politicians instead of going towards important things such as police, infrastructure, or back to the citizens.
4) When funding between candidates is equalized, it benefits the incumbent because the incumbent has built-in advantages such as name recognition. The challenger is unable to overcome these advantages by spending more and getting our his message better than his opponent. These programs basically are incumbency protection schemes.
For more: My recent op-ed on taxpayer financing appeared in the Fayetteville Observer yesterday. You also can check out this research alert and this op-ed on a bill that would expand political welfare to other municipalities.
