The Catch-22 of Reform Fundraising

After the summer of love and hope for Repair California’s constitutional convention idea turn into a fall of campaign logistics and then into a winter of discouraging failure, we were reminded once again what a tough trick it is to fund a reform campaign.  There was no lack of enthusiasm for the constitutional convention idea.  Thousands of supporters turned out at town hall meetings across the state, newspapers editorialized about it in glowing terms, and Governor Schwarzenegger rarely missed a chance to voice his support for it.

Yet the cold reality is that none of this turned into cold, hard cash to support a signature-gathering effort.  Repair California’s grass-roots campaign ran out of steam when it ran out of money in February, calling its petition drive quits shortly after it began. As anyone who watches direct democracy closely knows, serious funding for paid signature gatherings is both the necessary and the sufficient condition for placing a citizen initiative on the ballot.  Repair California faced a particularly high hurdle because it needed at least $3 million to qualify a pair of initiatives, and fell far short.

This failure illustrates the Catch-22 that reform groups always face: It is hard to raise money for ballot measures that do not help any narrow interest, but nearly impossible to obtain broad support for measures that appear to provide a special benefit.  The first part of this dilemma is easy to read from the story of Repair California. Holding a constitutional convention, with all of the uncertainty about what might emerge from it, wasn’t clearly in the interests of any major political camp, industry, or benefactor.  Support may have been a mile wide, but it was only an inch deep among the groups that can write the six- and seven-figure checks necessary to fund a serious campaign.

The second part of the dilemma can be seen in recent cases of reform propositions that made it to the ballot, but failed to win a majority vote because they appeared to tilted toward the interests of their benefactors.  Proposition 89, the “clean money” initiative put on the ballot by the California Nurses Association in 2006, provided comprehensive campaign finance changes, but included a few provisions that clearly benefited unions and would help the CNA push for single-payer healthcare reform.  As laudable as those goals may have been, changing the rules to help one side didn’t appear fair to voters, who rejected the proposition handily.  In 2008, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate leader Don Perata funded Proposition 93, which would have changed term limits and, not coincidentally, extended both Nunez and Perata’s careers.  Again, many strong arguments could be made for this initiative, but the opposition only needed to focus on the two scandal-plagued legislative leaders to turn voters against the measure.

The term limits reform idea may be back this year, and this time without any conflict of interest because it does not apply to any sitting legislators.  An initiative that does just this is currently circulating.  The question for that measure, and for all other general interest reform measures, is who will show them the money?