I have more reason than most people to want Jim Kenney put in a bad light, as I’m running for a position he holds, Council at Large. And I strongly disagree with the legislation he proposed, to eliminate all spending limitations in the Mayoral election when one candidate spends a large amount from his own resources.
But I think we ought to be fair to Councilman Kenney in two respects.
First, if he puts forward a public financing bill in the near future, there is no reason to think he is being cynical about it. He has supported public financing for a number of years.
Second, while part of his concern in putting forward his controversial bill to eliminate spending caps might be to help Bob Brady be elected Mayor, we shouldn’t entirely dismiss the principle he is also defending, that millionaires should not dominate our politics by virtue of their ability to spend enormous sums of money on television advertising.
As I have said before, that is a concern we progressives should adopt as our own. Plutocracy is as bad for democratic government as pay for play.
The question now is what do we do to address both the concerns we have about unlimited campaign contributions and the concerns we should have about our electoral offices being held by millionaires whose contributions to themselves cannot be limited.
Dan has been suggesting that we might enact public financing of the Mayor’s race this year. Perhaps this is possible and I’m going to think a bit about how it can be done. I’m afraid however, that with the race already underway and with so much money already contributed to candidates there is no plausible way to do this fairly. Perhaps Dan or someone else can propose one.
I have also proposed limits on television advertising. I’ve been looking into the law and, while I’m not sure, I think that FCC regulations preempts some of the reforms I have suggested. Again, I’m going to keep studying this.
In the meantime, is there another possible compromise? Could we perhaps adopt a proposal similar to that found in Federal law which gradually raises the contribution limits as one candidate contributes more money to his own campaign. This compromise would (1) sustain the principle that there should be some limits on campaign contributions; (2) keep those limits on place in the current campaign; and (3) allow the other Mayoral candidates to collect larger contributions as Tom Knox keeps contributing to his own campaign.
It would I suppose be helpful to me if the controversy over contribution limits continues for the next few months. But it would be best for the city if we take action that upholds the principle of contribution limits and addresses the problems of money in our democracy in as reasonable way as possible given the circumstances of the 2007 election.
And then, next year, let’s finally tackle public financing of our campaigns.