DEMOCRACY IN ACTION—Clean Elections candidates can qualify for public financing by collecting a threshold number of small contributions in their legislative district.The program, which ran as a pilot last year, will expand to six districts in 2007 across the state.

NJPIRG Pushes Sweeping Clean Election Reform

Politicians’ ethics are a perennial issue in New Jersey, and while there is a clear consensus on the problem—too much money in politics—there hasn’t been a clear answer.

NJPIRG is working closely with Citizen Action, AARP and The League of Women Voters to create sweeping political reform—publicly- financed campaigns, called “Clean Elections.”

The idea is simple: candidates who don’t take special interest contributions—money from businesses, PACs, or unions, for example—don’t owe any favors to those groups. Also, by eliminating candidates’ need to seek large sums of special interest money, Clean Elections opens the door to qualified but non-traditional candidates.

Unlike most campaign finance reforms, Clean Elections—properly designed—cannot be easily subverted, and that’s why the idea is so powerful.

“The concept of clean elections serves up a double whammy for democracy,” said NJPIRG Advocate Abigail Caplovitz. “It creates a more level playing field—more talented candidates can run for office and the power of special interest contributions is diminished.”

Clean Elections candidates qualify for public financing by collecting enough small contributions from registered voters in their district to demonstrate significant community support. Once their qualifying contributions are verified, they receive public funds, and are forbidden from taking private contributions.

Clean Elections in New Jersey began last year, with a pilot project in Assembly Districts 6 and 13 in south and central New Jersey.

The test project was not a clear success— only one candidates out of five successfully qualified as clean election candidates. The test projects successes and failures have been successfully studied by the Clean Elections Commission through a series of public hearings this year.

All the candidates who ran clean campaigns told the Commission that once citizens understood the program, they strongly supported it. They said their main difficulty was bureaucratic rules that made the process overly difficult.

The Commission report included draft legislation that NJPIRG is working to enact. It would expand Clean Elections to six districts for the 2007 elections, and include both Senate and Assembly seats and primaries. Two of the districts would be in north Jersey, two in central Jersey, and two in south Jersey.

In the Commission’s legislation, by demonstrating public support, candidates would be funded for both primaries and general elections.

Qualifying contributions of $10 each must be collected, after which candidates receive $60,000 for contested primaries and $100,000 for contested elections. (More money becomes available if the clean candidates are being outspent by nonparticipating candidates.)

“We can make clean elections a reality here in New Jersey,” Caplovitz said. “Democracy and elections work best when fundraising is not the most important prequisite.”