The San Diego Ethics Commission has come to conclude they can over-rule the First Amendment… calling the ACLU!
(I read this first on www.redcountysandiego.com)
Rules push candidates into the woodwork
San Diego Union Tribune
Monday, March 12, 2007
By Logan Jenkins
News bulletin:
ZERO CANDIDATES RUNNING IN SAN DIEGO ELECTIONS!
The seats for council Districts 1, 3, 5 and 7 will open up wide in 2008, thanks to term limits, but not one early riser is out on the hustings hustling love or money, the mother’s milk of political ambition.
How does one account for this remarkable restraint?
In a word, ECCO.
OK, it’s not a word. It’s an acronym, not to be confused with eco-cool Danish footwear.
In the legalistic view of the Election Campaign Control Ordinance – approved by the San Diego City Council in late 2005; fine-tuned and enforced by the city’s Ethics Commission – a candidate is not a real candidate until the moment he/she receives or spends campaign funds.
Because ECCO strictly prohibits candidates from soliciting or spending one cent or more before June 3, or 12 months before the 2008 primary, no candidates can exist until the starter’s gun is fired June 3.
The syllogism goes like this: Candidates raise and/or spend money; no candidate can spend and/or raise money until June 3; therefore, there are no legal candidates until June 3.
There’s just one flaw in this Orwellian logic.
There are candidates, a slew of them. A small sample:
In District 1, Phil Thalheimer is taking another shot after losing to Councilman Scott Peters in 2004. Says so himself.
Every political junkie in District 3 knows Todd Gloria, district director for Rep. Susan Davis, is champing at the bit to replace Councilwoman Toni Atkins. He’ll confirm if you ask him.
District 5? Carl DeMaio of Rancho Bernardo makes no bones of his desire to take Councilman Brian Maienschein’s seat and work like a whirling dervish for fiscal reform.
As for District 7, April Boling has her conservative sights set on Councilman Jim Madaffer’s place on the dais. Boling isn’t shy about saying so.
So when and where is an admitted candidate not a legal candidate?
Right here. Right now.
Franz Kafka would love this stuff. Joseph Heller would get a kick out of it, too.
The original idea may have had merit, though one wonders.
During a massive overhaul of election law in 2005, when the council was saving the world from electoral corruption, a strict time restriction was imposed upon campaign fundraising.
The explicit goal, according to an Ethics Commission spokesman, was to stop council members from raising money while they were supposed to be serving their constituents. (Councilman Tony Young ran afoul of ECCO last week.)
Undebated was ECCO’s pernicious effect on nonincumbent candidates.
For the next 2½ months, dozens of “closet candidates” for city offices, including city attorney and mayor, will be forced to conduct illegal stealth campaigns. They had better keep their wits about them or they could pay a steep price.
Consider this weirdness, one of many:
Closet candidates may, before June 3, talk to people about their desire for office. They cannot, however, put up a Web site about themselves, even if it doesn’t mention running for office.
Why? Because the Web site counts as an illegal campaign expenditure. Theoretically, it costs money to build and maintain a site, even if it doesn’t in reality.
For several years, Gloria has maintained a Web site that included personal and work-related information. Though it didn’t cost him anything to put up, he recently learned it might be in violation of ECCO. A chill wind blew through his fledgling candidacy.
In what he calls “an abundance of caution,” Gloria took down the site. On June 3, when he can be a legitimate candidate, the Web site will rise again, he told me.
Another bewildering ECCO regulation:
Before June 3, noncandidates can conduct “exploratory” polls to measure their name recognition or voter interest in issues.
However, if closet candidates use the polls to present themselves in a favorable light, they’ll be subject to a fine and unwelcome publicity.
The same blurry distinction pertains to the hiring of political consultants, the competition for which already has begun.
In an explanatory letter, the Ethics Commission framed it this way:
“If the advice pertains solely to whether or not a person should run for office, then the exploratory exception would apply. On the other hand, if the advice sought concerns the development of campaign strategies, then a payment for that advice would constitute an expenditure outside the scope of exploratory activities.”
Consultant: You can win, baby.
Candidate: Great!
Consultant: Here’s how.
Candidate: You wearin’ a wire?
Popular opinion aside, politicians are Americans, too. They don’t forfeit their First Amendment rights when they decide to run for office.
Except in San Diego.
For the next couple of months, the pressure is going to build for closet candidates, especially those without personal fortunes, to hire consultants and secure pledges for money, the sincerest form of political support.
With ECCO echoing in their brains, the closet candidates will resort to winks and nods. The subversive mating rituals might be comic if they didn’t involve fines and public shame.
Controlling the flow of campaign money?
That may be a necessary evil.
Controlling the flow of speech?
That’s just evil.