Publicly Financed Pizza
It is hard to imagine a system more rigged for waste, fraud and abuse than Connecticut’s new public campaign financing law. While advocates of the new system declare it a success, political campaign veterans from around the state see it as a major catastrophe waiting to happen — a boondoggle that could reach full bloom as early as the fall of 2008.
Simply put, the new law will put more than $10 million, during this legislative election year, into the hands of incumbent and novice politicians, their paid staffs and volunteers.
A few will know what to do with the money and how to properly manage it; many will make it up as they go along. Operatives, from the left and the right, and some with no particular partisan agenda, are already thinking up ways to access the money for themselves by providing the services every campaign needs. As is often the case, their efforts will take them right to the edge of the law.
Handing over this kind of cash to campaign operatives of disparate skill is inherently dangerous. The combination of politics, competition and blank checks is an expensive test of human nature.
The new system will waste at least tens of thousands of dollars, because in some districts, candidates can not responsibly spend all the money that will be available to them. They will spend it anyway, because a campaign that is in the black on Election Day is usually a losing campaign.
In the days before public financing, there was an annual debate in the legislature over the issue. Opponents were successful in defeating the legislation year after year.
One of the most effective arguments was to ask how campaign money is typically spent and then to ask what the public reaction would be if it knew its money was being spent that way.
The average campaign spends its money on advertising, polls, campaign advisors and things like bumper stickers, buttons, balloons, helium for balloons, doughnuts and pizza. Not necessarily in that order.
A cursory review of Connecticut’s first publicly financed campaign shows that is just how your money was used. The campaigns — in the race to fill the seat left vacant with the death of state Representative Dick Belden — listed numerous entries for helium, doughnut and pizza reimbursements.
Public financing is based on the flawed premise that by removing the money donated to politicians by private interests, who might expect something in return, corruption will be eliminated.
What the public financing faithful cannot bring themselves to admit is it doesn’t really matter where the money is coming from — the money itself is the problem. The source is secondary and may only change the form the corruption takes.
The first corruption scandal resulting from public financing may very well be worse than any before, because by definition, it will involve all public money.
How long before the first campaign worker is accused of marking up the cost of pizza and pocketing the difference? Small stuff leads to bigger stuff.
How long before a consultant is accused of splitting his fee with a candidate, or a campaign manager? It doesn’t take a criminal mind to figure out how a system created to clean up politics can turn tragically and quickly into just the opposite.
The possibility that someone may eventually try to take advantage of the new system has not been lost on the Elections Enforcement Commission, which in 2007, hired former FBI agent Charles Urso — a veteran of public corruption cases — as its lead legal investigator for election fraud. A good hire, but a bad sign.
Dean Pagani is a former gubernatorial advisor. He is V.P. of Public Affairs for Cashman and Katz Integrated Communications in Glastonbury.
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