Investing in Political Integrity

Money may not be the root of all evil, but the exaggerated influence it gives special interests and the corruption it engenders among public officials at all levels contribute considerably to the anguish of American democracy today.

The magnitude of the campaign-finance crisis is greater than ever before. For example, according to the nonpartisan California Commission on Campaign Financing, the amount of money spent to win seats in this state’s Legislature has risen more than 4,000% over the past three decades. This year alone, total campaign spending in legislative contests may come close to $100 million. The situation at the federal and municipal levels differs only in absolute size, not in degree.

In its most basic form--the good old-fashioned bribe--political corruption is universally condemned. There is, after all, a general agreement extending back to biblical times that the outright exchange of political favors for money is wrong. But the bribe’s polite cousin--conflict of interest--is a slightly shiftier character. Even so, there now is a broadening consensus that public officials ought not to participate in governmental decisions in which they have an economic interest.

But dealing with the corrupting or, for that matter, distorting influence of money which enters government through the perfectly legal avenue of the campaign-finance system is a complex business. Today’s debate in the City Council over the City of Los Angeles Ethics Act is a textbook example of the problem. Even though the proposed act incorporates many of the reform movement’s most advanced ideas, the portion of the law dealing with ethical conduct in office appears far more palatable to many council members than the proposals dealing with the ethical conduct of politics, the campaign-finance reform section.

Too bad. Ethical government and ethical politics are inextricably linked. The most disturbing of the wave of scandals now afflicting American government at all levels invariably have their roots in politicians raising huge sums from special interests. Consider the present predicaments of three well-known California politicians: U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and--more seriously--state Sen. Joseph B. Montoya, who is on trial. The most serious of the difficulties in which they are enmeshed stem in some part from the ways in which they raised money for their election campaigns.

So what is to be done? Piecemeal approaches to the problem--mostly involving greater disclosure and limits on the size and kind of contributions--have been on the political agenda for nearly 20 years. As the evidence indicates, partial solutions are not equal to the task. What does seem promising, though, is the comprehensive, three-pronged approach incorporated in the City of Los Angeles Ethics Act and already adopted in New York City, Seattle, Tucson and Sacramento County. The essential reform triad consists of:

--Voluntary ceilings on campaign expenditures;

--Limits on the size of contributions;

--Partial public financing of campaigns through the mechanism of matching funds for those candidates who agree to abide by spending limits and other electoral regulations.

True, other steps are also worthwhile, such as Minnesota’s restrictions on off-year fund-raising and Alaska’s tax refunds for small, individual contributors or those which match contributions from within a lawmaker’s district at a higher level than those from without. So is a feature of New Jersey’s statute, included in the Los Angeles measure, which requires recipients of public financing to agree to timely debates. But experience shows that campaign-finance reform succeeds only when it incorporates all three of the major principles enumerated above.

For instance, simply limiting contributions to candidates, as is the case with the House and Senate, did nothing to inhibit the ability of wealthy savings and loan executives to win what clearly was an excessively sympathetic hearing from Cranston and other lawmakers. California has had rigorous disclosure laws for some time and, more recently, a limit on contributions. Yet our electoral problems continue to spiral out of control, while public participation and confidence in state government plummet. San Francisco’s last mayoral election was the first conducted with a new, lower limit on contributions, and it was the first in the city’s history in which every candidate spent more than $1 million.

In Seattle, by contrast, a decade of experience with the three-point approach has produced municipal politics that are widely admired for their integrity, competitiveness and openness to women and minority candidates. In New York, where four years ago former Mayor Ed Koch outspent his opponents seven to one, new rules on public financing, contribution limits and a ceiling on expenditures helped produce an election last year that was extremely competitive.

Still, political reform is one of those issues on which serious-minded people frequently have legitimate differences. In 1893, for example, California passed what was then the nation’s most advanced campaign-finance law. Called the Purity In Elections Act, it provided, among other things, ceilings on expenditures and a prohibition on transfers of funds from one candidate to another. It subsequently was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court because it regulated primaries--contests whose rules, the justices held, were purely a partisan concern--as well as general elections. The man who successfully argued that position before the high court was a young lawyer named Hiram W. Johnson, who less than 20 years later would be swept into the California governor’s mansion as the standard-bearer of Progressive reform.

Similarly, some Los Angeles City Council members have reservations about public financing based on what they believe it will cost. Fortunately, the early projections that created that anxiety appear unrealistic. Their estimated expenditure of more than $20 million over four years includes the cost of an ethics commission and staff, which most now agree the city will have in any event. Moreover, the projected figure assumes the remote possibility that three candidates will qualify for matching funds in every conceivable primary and that there will be a runoff in every council race. That strains the limits of probability. The projected cost of public financing for New York’s recent mayoral race was $28 million; the actual cost turned out to be slightly more than $4 million. If cost really is a stopper, the simple, though not necessarily ideal, solution is write a cap on public financing into the ordinance.

Perhaps most important, the skeptics’ approach to this issue neglects the hidden costs of the status quo--costs such as those incurred in the savings and loan debacle or in the dozens of city planning decisions taken under the watchful eye of wealthy--and to officeholders, generous--developers. Not least among those hidden costs is the terrible erosion of public confidence that leads a majority of Californians to believe their Legislature is on the take. Democracy is a hands-on operation, but it does not work if the majority of voters believe the levers of government are too dirty to touch.

Public financing of campaigns is the next logical step in that democratic American tradition that began with the widest possible extension of the right to vote and continues with the effort to ensure that the franchise is exercised in equality. To that end, 19th-Century reformers abolished property requirements for voters, and progressive thinkers in our own time successfully fought to eliminate the poll tax.

The issue being debated in Los Angeles today is a vital chapter in that ongoing struggle. By striking at the unwholesome, unequal influence of wealthy special interests, the City of Los Angeles Ethics Act holds the promise of an electoral system in which the rights and interests of every man and woman are equal not only in the eyes of the law, but also in the eyes of the lawmakers.