Connecticut taxpayer funded campaign finance reform has died the death of a thousand cuts.
Hartford Courant
reporter Edmund Mahony, who has been around the state’s campaign reform process
for many years, has written its political obituary in a story titled “Election
reform concerns remain: Long dormant case casts light on taxpayer campaign
funding.”
The blunt weapon
used to bludgeon campaign finance reform in the state was a “perfectly legal”
walk-around amendment that subverted the campaign reform law’s intent and
purpose – which was to level the campaign financing process between incumbent
politicians of both parties and outspent challengers.
The last rites on
Connecticut’s campaign finance laws were read by Charles Urso, “who spent
decades investigating political crime for the FBI and led the State Elections
Enforcement Commission’s [State Senator Edward] Kennedy investigation until
retiring in 2016.”
While serving in the
FBI, reporter Mahony notes, Urso “was a lead investigator in cases that led to
the political corruption convictions of former state Treasurer Paul Silvester
and former Gov. John G. Rowland. Evidence of campaign finance irregularities
that turned up in both cases was the impetus at the General Assembly for the
reforms of the CEP [Citizens Election Program].”
After years fruitlessly
attempting to resolve a complaint against now retired State Senator Edward Kennedy
lodged with the State Elections Enforcement Commission [SEEC], Urso has thrown
in the sponge, leaving it to others to throw down a gauntlet.
“It’s time to end
the Citizens Election Program,” Urso said. “The State Elections Enforcement
Commission has failed in its most important role as evidenced by its handling
of Edward Kennedy’s state Senate race in 2014. If the commission is unable to
investigate, enforce and opine on the regulations of the CEP, the program
should be terminated. The taxpayers deserve better.”
The complaint
against Kennedy – that he had exceeded CEP campaign limits -- has been shelved,
perhaps permanently, because an amendment has subverted the whole State
Elections Enforcement Commission’s mission.
Kennedy had promised
in a 2014 race to limit his campaign spending to $90,000 in taxpayer supported
campaign funding, his entitled allowance under the CEP, “considered a model,”
Mahony notes, “for keeping special interests out of state elections by
financing campaigns with public dollars.” However, “Democratic Party records
show that Kennedy’s campaign benefitted from almost four times that much (emphasis mine), using a loophole in the
reform program created by an anonymous
amendment slipped
through the legislature the year before.”
The State Elections
Enforcement Commission opened an investigation on a complaint from Kennedy’s
outspent opponent, Madison, Connecticut Selectman Bruce Wilson.
Nearly a decade later,
Mahony reports, Wilson said he is still waiting to find out what happened.
“Not a word,” Wilson
said. “The truly offensive part of all this is that the complaint hasn’t been
resolved and probably never will be. I understand politics is a blood sport and
you have to be prepared for that when you sign up. But you know what? It is
what causes everybody to lose faith in their elected officials.”
An amendment
sanctioning organizational expenditures created a carve-out for incumbent
politicians – but not for challengers, whose resources are much shallower. The
carve-out, Kennedy’s lawyer argues, is completely legal, as the amendment was
“adopted by the General Assembly in a bipartisan way. And both Democratic and
Republican leadership political action committees raise money for
organizational expenditures every cycle knowing who they are going to be used
to support. So it is part of the landscape.”
The legal question
cannot advance to a court, where legal questions are most effectively
adjudicated, until the SEEC renders a decision on Wilson’s complaint.
And the SEEC has
shelved the complaint.
So, there will
likely be no adjudicated resolution.
In the meantime,
everyone knows that the much vaunted “even playing field” promoted by good
government activists, many of whom have been strangely silent on an equitable
resolution of the Kennedy complaint, is a laughable fiction.
If self-serving
media releases from political incumbents such as U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal
were campaign cash, Blumenthal, as well as all other all Democrat members of
Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation, would be drowning in campaign
funds. And in fact and reality, all of them are awash in campaign funding as it
is. Blumenthal consistently has launched his campaigns for re-election with
millions unavailable to the majority of his Republican Party opponents. And, of
course, Blumenthal’s bloated pre-campaign chest is always well furnished with
“perfectly legal” contributions, a disincentive for same party primary
challengers.
The same, of course,
might be said of incumbent Republican members of Connecticut’s U.S.
Congressional Delegation – but there are none.
The real answer to
the corrupting influence of money in politics may be term limits -- which at
least would assure the general public of a robust turnover of bought
politicians.
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