Late last week the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which sits in San Francisco and is known as a liberal court, upheld the Arizona "Citizens Clean Election Act" which provides taxpayer dollars "matching funds" to candidates for state office to use for advertising of their campaigns. Since California is flirting with such a law, known as Proposition 15 on the next election ballot, the Court’s action is worth taking note of.
The conservative Goldwater Institute had been successful at the trial court level in knocking out the law on First Amendment grounds. Their solid argument in the trial court, along with a couple friendly PACs and candidates, was that the campaign law actually chilled or reduced speech rights. This is because under the law, if an opposing candidate fails to use only the taxpayer money for his/her campaign, and spends more than the candidate taking the state money, then the state automatically coughs up more taxpayer dollars for the candidate "on the dole." Thus, opposing candidates are discouraged to spend money on advertising, for fear that the government will respond by giving even more money to the other guy. It seems to me this system is not only violative of speech rights, but could really spawn election "welfare queen" situations where a couple of bums conspire to run against each other and keep hiking up the cost of the campaign to snag and pocket the extra tax dollars.
The decision is not at all in keeping with the trend of the Robert’s Supreme Court which is vigorously protecting First Amendment speech rights from encroachment of harsh campaign finance rules. I suspect this one will get appealed to the nation’s top court, which has a record of reversing many 9th Circuit decisions. Should Prop. 15 pass, it might even be subject to a "stay" lawsuit while the Supreme Court decides. Prop. 15 is not exactly like the Arizona law, however, because it applies only to the Secretary of State position. I’m not so sure it is the best thought out law ever to hit our ballot boxes. Why we need public financing of the Secretary of State’s office, that administers corporation filings and elections, and not the state Treasurer or Attorney General’s office, is something I can’t quite get the logic of.