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 The Wrong Solution to the Right Problem
by Tom Campbell
July 19, 2007
Sometimes people arrive at the wrong solution to the right problem. Public funding for Council of State elections is a great example. The problem is twofold. First, the public doesn’t know the candidates running for statewide office and secondly, there are concerns over who is funding their elections.
The average person in North Carolina cannot name the incumbent Insurance Commissioner, Labor Commissioner, State Auditor, State Treasurer, or Secretary of State. It isn’t that these aren’t important functions, but they are not high profile positions that affect folks in their everyday life. We faced the same issue with our judicial candidates and started a public funding experiment with those races. It is too early to tell for certain, but we suspect that public funding hasn’t greatly improved name recognition of judicial candidates. The funding isn’t sufficient to purchase widespread recognition.
The funding concerns are real. In far too many cases statewide races are funded by those who have interests or issues with the office, such as insurance companies, bankers, agribusiness concerns, etc. A look at the campaign finance reports of most Council of State races proves the point. There are few donations of 0 or less coming from the public. Most are high-dollar individual contributions, many from people who work for corporations or professions with interests in the office. Many dollars come from political action committees, groups who work for a business or members of special interest groups. In most instances those most affected by the office are the ones who donate to the election. This is a real problem but one that is not likely to be solved by public funding.
Here’s why. In order to wage a competitive statewide political campaign a candidate needs a minimum of one million dollars to purchase media recognition. Are we willing to provide million dollar public funding for each candidate?
Let’s assume for the moment we are beneficent people who agree to provide this high-dollar funding. If one candidate is an incumbent who has served in office for more than four years, while another is a relative newcomer who has never held statewide office, do you want to wager which one is going to win? It won’t make much difference which party, what philosophy, or likely even which issues are raised in the campaign; the incumbent most always wins. That is the great fallacy of public funding. The incumbent always has a significant advantage. The only way to overcome incumbent advantage is to either restrict how much an incumbent can receive and spend or increase challenger funding. It isn’t going to happen, therefore public funding inherently will favor incumbents.
Public funding for Council of State elections is the wrong solution to the right problem. The best way to correct the problems is through a Constitutional change that will shorten the ballot and make these positions appointed rather than elected. There is some argument for having the Attorney General, the Treasurer, and perhaps the Auditor elected independently from, but other states function well with appointed leadership in the other high-ranking positions and so can North Carolina.
This idea isn’t likely to gain much support, however. If we talk of modifying our Constitution it will likely begin a domino effect for other changes, notably the repeal of gubernatorial succession. That should trigger term limits for House and Senate leadership, and perhaps even legislative term limits. At least we would then be talking about the right solutions to the right problems. |
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