Clean Elections: Good or bad

I think about the Clean Elections System in Arizona a lot. I know, I know, I am geeky. This article in the Republic got me to thinking... My personal opinion is that public policy, all public policy is imperfect and generates trade-offs. I think it is nearly impossible for policy to be neutral. It always creates winners and losers. The AZ Clean Elections law is no exception.

Winners: People that want to run for the legislature, but are not well connected. Both state party committees are winners because candidates raise money for them instead of candidate committees. People who want to limit money in campaigns.

Losers: Traditional candidates. Interest groups with sufficient resources to influence elections. Challengers (especially state-wide challengers).

Now this is just my view of winners and losers. I am sure there is more to add to list and some of this is arguable, but I worry about the affect of the law especially when it comes to incumbency. I maybe in the minority, but I don't believe the Governor or AG are as popular as their election margins. They are popular in my house, but I would argue that their popularity is a mixture of incumbency (and they are both really competent public servants) and lightly funded challengers. This is all really great when your party controls two out of three constitutional offices, but what happens when we don't?

Here is my fear. In 2010, we have an open governors race. There is more than an outside chance that a Republican will be elected to both the Govenor and AG offices. Imagine the terrifying possibilities for Governor (John Huppenthal, Russel Pierce, Matt Salmon, any Republican from our congressional delegation) or for AG (Andrew Thomas). I fear that we will have an extreme marginally popular Republican in office (a la George Bush) who skates by with 50.1% of the vote. Why? Because Clean Election ties the hands of the people who could pour in the money to defeat them. I think Clean Election needs to dramitically restructure their funding mechinism for state-wide office.

Having said all of that, we are much better (in my opinion) with the law than without it. It has help elect a lot of good legislators and spread power around.