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Keep Hope Alive: Public Financing of Campaigns Protects Against Special Interests

By Wayne Goodwin
Published: Jul. 15, 2009

RALEIGH - Last year’s presidential campaign was in great part about hope. But what many North Carolinians may not know is that a pilot voter program quietly re-instilled hope in our elections and the power of the people over special interests.

As North Carolina has grown from its colonial days, responsibility for important policy areas such as agriculture, labor and the regulation of insurance has been divided among independently elected constitutional offices, together called the Council of State.

Because of this division, each Council of State officer is continuously and increasingly bombarded by special interests who want to influence these policy areas. The bombardment reaches fever pitch leading up to elections, when special interests ratchet up their pitch with campaign contributions or promises of contributions to candidates.

Underscored by recent campaign finance scandals is the need for public officials to remain free from actual or perceived undue influence. That is why campaign reforms are so badly needed.

This is not merely academic for me -- it’s real. As a legislator and statewide candidate in 2004 and 2008, I witnessed firsthand what candidates endure. While it used to be that a candidate would call on a few people in each county while enjoying an RC Cola at a country store, today campaigning is about the money chase and spending every waking hour raising it for expensive TV ads, countless polls and consultants.

In my own 2004 race, like other candidates, I had to lock myself in a cubicle -- a campaign “war room” -- and spend up to 12 hours daily, six days weekly, on the phone for 12 months. Frankly, asking people you know -- and those you don't -- to each donate up to thousands of dollars is awkward, but a necessary component of the current system. Asking someone to donate to a charitable cause or a church is one thing, but making 200 calls daily for your personal campaign's benefit decimates what a candidate should be doing: spending time with voters.

It should also be no surprise that many persons who donate to Council of State offices are often directly or indirectly regulated by those very offices, a situation which is potentially fraught with all sorts of problems. Big donors sometimes try using their influence to seek tax breaks, weak regulations or favors that cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

In 2007, legislators enacted a law that's a first step toward solving this problem. The Voter-Owned Elections program created a voluntary public financing option for three Council of State offices (auditor, insurance commissioner and superintendent of public instruction). Lawmakers, current and former Council of State leaders, and thousands of North Carolinians believe it to be a good idea because it gives candidates a chance to forego the dreadful money chase in exchange for limited public funds to run their campaigns.

With passage of that pilot program, we took a gigantic step in 2008 towards cleaning up the campaign process. We increased the number of qualified candidates willing to run and enhanced the interaction between them and the voters.

In my successful 2008 insurance commissioner campaign there were more head-to-head debates between me and my Republican opponent (who was also publicly financed) than in all other statewide races combined. If that option had not been available, then there would most certainly have been much fewer than the 22 debates that my opponent and I participated in around North Carolina.

We even issued a joint op-ed column on this subject last year, unheard of by opposing candidates immediately prior to an election. Furthermore, the percentage of contributions from insurance-affiliated persons dramatically dropped from 66 percent to approximately 5 percent between 2004 and 2008.

This year the General Assembly is considering a bill to include most other Council of State offices in the optional public financing program. For voters to benefit from this program in 2012, it is vital that the steps be taken today to expand it. In so doing, we will return North Carolina elections back to the voters and away from special interests.