Public Funding for Political Parties

The Conservative Party will make campaign finance a central pillar of its reelection platform in the next federal election, which observers expect this coming spring or fall.

Under the Conservatives’ plan, political parties will retain the power to issue tax receipts to individual donors. Political parties will also remain entitled to receive reimbursements for authorized campaign expenditures. But gone will be the direct subsidies that grant political parties roughly $2 for every vote they get at the polls.

That strikes me as not only fair and reasonable, but also quite right. I think it’s a winner.

If there is a compelling reason to disagree with the Conservative Party on campaign finance, I cannot think of it, particularly given how well Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the point here:

I think we’ve been pretty clear that we don’t think there’s really strong justification for this direct subsidy to parties. … Our view is that there is a role for some public finance, but it has got to be tied to a party’s own efforts, or to the willingness of voters to actually contribute this money.

It remains to be seen, though, whether the rest of the Conservative Party’s platform will earn my similarly enthusiastic support.

Jon Corzine Fails to Buy New Jersey Election

Alright, it’s just about time to permanently retire the trope that lots of campaign spending buys elections, and, thus, scrap all ill-conceived and undemocratic campaign finance laws.  In politics, money isn’t everything; just ask soon to be former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine:

Corzine, a former Wall Street executive, has spent $23.6 million on the general election, compared to Republican Chris Christie’s $8.8 million and independent Chris Daggett’s $1.2 million, according to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission.

Corzine donated or loaned his general election campaign $22.6 million of its $24.1 million, writing checks to cover TV ads, several pollsters and a $15,000 hall rental for President Obama’s visit to Fairleigh Dickinson University.

If political campaigns were all about accounting, Mitt Romney would have been battling Obama last year, Brian Mulroney would have become Prime Minister a decade earlier than he did, California and Maine would have gay marriage, the Charlottetown Accord would have passed, and it might have been Forbes v. Bradley instead of Bush v. Gore in 2000.

Sure, one can spend more money and win more votes; the Obama-McCain election demonstrates that.  But could it be that the reason that Obama was able to raise far more funds than McCain is the reason he won more votes: he was insanely popular?

In The Ottawa Citizen years ago, John Robson wrote on this very topic.  He argued that no matter how much money you spent, you couldn’t convince people to eat a sludge sandwich (sorry, no link).  Voters in New Jersey know sludge when they see it, and, thus, voted against Jon Corzine.

No matter how much he spent.