JLF president John Hood warned us. The spin surrounding Mike Easley’s testimony before the State Board of Elections has started with calls for tighter campaign finance limits and —you guessed it —- coercive taxpayer-funded campaigns:
“Unless and until we start thinking about systemic ways to changes, bigger-picture ways to change, we’re going to continue to see these sorts of things,” said Damon Circosta, who leads the nonprofit N.C. Center for Voter Education. “It’s not because the majority of people who go into public service are bad people. It’s because we’ve set up a system that has false incentives and we need to change that.”
The races for campaign cash have become particularly acute in the television era, when statewide campaigns can be won or lost depending on who has enough money in the bank to buy television time.
Circosta and Hall are among a growing cadre of advocates for publicly financed elections. Under such a system, used now in North Carolina for appellate court races and some lesser statewide offices, candidates can voluntarily limit the number and size of donations they receive from individuals. In exchange, they receive public funds.
“We need to think about shifting the money away from private individuals and all of us chipping in,” Circosta said.
Easley’s story about vacuuming out his fireplace when Robert Bleecker called asking if he was going to pay for his son’s SUV came up quite a bit this Halloween weekend, and it was the subject of much laughter.
