elections – Page 6

The chances for reformin the election’s wake

A bit of a surprise, but not a lot of newspaper commentary today on the election. There were a few, however, worth noting:

Tom Moran in The Star-Ledger outlines how the change in Republican Senate members might alter the party’s relationship to the majority, especially because folks like Bill Baroni and Kevin O’Toole have been pushing the ethics reform issue. The idea — and it makes some sense — is that the GOP might be willing to forgo partisanship and work with the governor on real reforms, with Democrats like John Adler and Barbara Buono then playing maverick to force change.

To see how this might play out, look at the prospects for ethics reform, the albatross around the Democratic Party’s neck.

Democrats tried to release some pressure by enacting weak reforms earlier this year on dual officeholding and campaign finance reform. Gov. Jon Corzine says he wants more, and will push hard for it this year.

As it happens, Republicans agree with him. It’s the Democratic leaders in the Legislature who are blocking the tougher reforms.So look for the new senators to pounce on this in a way the old guard did not. They will offer the governor support, and challenge him to get his own troops in line. They will seek Democratic defections so they can force a floor vote on the reforms, even if Senate President Richard Codey tries to block it. They will hold news conferences and town meetings to push the cause.

“We will use whatever tactics we need to use,” Baroni said. “In this campaign, they stood up and said they want reform. Well, now is the time.”

I hope he’s right. The reforms that were adopted were absurdly weak and there is a lot of difficult work to be done — and not just on ethics.

As Charles Stiles in The Record points out, the Democrats have some advantages that they should use to take some chances and make some real headway on the budget.

The new Democratic majority now has enormous advantages — strong majorities in both houses, which include a new generation of freshman lawmakers. The Democrats also have a governor with strong approval ratings, while New Jersey Republicans are bereft of cash and saddled with George Bush and an unpopular war in Iraq.

Instead of taking a risk-free path to the next election cycle, the Democrats should reconsider their priorities and put forward a progressive, family-oriented agenda — universal health care, a more equitable school funding formula, an energy policy that weighs consumer and environmental concerns with business needs — that could set the stage for Democratic Party control for the next decade. Stop worrying about campaign contributions. They will come.

“We know what the problems are. We know some of the baseline initiatives to be taken,” said former Democratic Gov. Jim Florio. He noted that Corzine has already laid out the foundation of change, with commissions evaluating health care, school funding and energy reform — even though they barely got a mention on the campaign trail.

“Now is the time to deal with them,” Florio said. “I think the Legislature is ready to do it. I think the Legislature will be prepared.”

I would hope so. It is interesting that Stiles quotes Florio — my sense is that the former governor has remained unpopular, but that his stock has grown significantly among people who understand the state’s problems. If the state had followed his plan at the time — not a perfect plan, admittedly — the school funding debate maybe taking a different form and perhaps we wouldn’t be faced with some of the structural problems created by his immediate successors.

The chances of anything real happening, though, depend primarily on Gov. Corzine. If he shows a willingness to go to the mat on ethics and fiscal reform — something he lacked the stomach for during his first two years in office — then we will see major reforms take place. If he continues to play footsie with the traditional Democratic powerbrokers, then all bets are off and he will find himself facing a far tougher re-election fight than he probably should face.

Which brings up another point — one that could also derail reform. Gov. Corzine is up for re-election in 2009 — as are all 80 members of the new Assembly. Election politics have the very real potential to color everything that is to come in the next two years. If it does, change will not occur.

(By the way, my analysis of why the anger and disaffection in the state did not translate to gains for the GOP will be in tomorrow’s South Brunswick Post and Friday’s Cranbury Press.)

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I vote for blue

Wally Edge raises an interesting question about the upcoming mid-term election:

If Democrats are successful in bucking the trend of mid-term elections going against the party that controls the governorship, as they were four years ago, it might be a signal of just how blue a state New Jersey has become — or evidence that Larry Bartals’ 2001 redistricting map was, as the GOP claims, truly one-sided.

He lists the last three decades of mid-term results, showing that the party that controlled the governorship has historically lost seats.

I have two issues with his analysis. First, the Florio mid-term and the first Byrne mid-term occurred at times when the electorate was teed off over new taxes. The backlash that created had a lot to do with those results.

My other issue is one of time: Going back 30-plus years is rather meaningless given the drastic demographic changes that have taken place.

I have another theory, however. The Florio mid-term was actually an aberration based on his unpopular tax plan, as was the election of Christie Whitman as governor (she eaked out a win over Floiro and then barely held on against Jim McGreevey — the two smallest margins of victory in memory). Whitman’s first win was a function of lingering anger over Florio, while her second win, I think, came courtesy of her incumbency and little else.

Using these suppositions — and that’s all they are — as a baseline, and adding the recent blue votes in presidential races (and the fact that there has not been a Republican U.S. senator from New Jersey since the Carter administration), one could make the argument that a different trend is in play: That the GOP is slowly disintegrating, consistently losing seats regardless of who is in the governor’s seat.

I’m no political scientist, but this is as plausible a description of the New Jersey political landscape as any other.

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Dem bums

There have been thousands of words written in recent days about the Democrats’ failure to show any backbone and stand up to one of history’s least popular presidents on an issue that is vital to the health and survival of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The New York Times, for instance, called the party’s Senate leaders “feckless” today in an editorial; Glenn Greenwald offers this dissection; and Chris Floyd of Empire Burlesque offers this and this.

But none have been able to top Arthur Silber, who makes the point — a valid one I think — that the Democrats and Republicans share a basic goal, shared also by corporate America: Control.

(T)he Democrats may differ from the Republicans on matters of detail, or emphasis, or style. But with regard to the fundamental political principles involved, everything that has happened over the last six years — just as is the case with everything that has happened over the last one hundred years — is what the Democrats want, too.

It may seem a bit extreme, but an honest evaluation of Democratic presidencies — and wars, as offered by Silber — doesn’t exactly show the party to be a shining light of populism or progressive principles. State liberalism in the form of the Democratic Party has really been little more than the flip side of the old business conservatism — a system designed to keep the corporate engine humming.

They could have made a stand here, stopped the president in his tracks and forced the national GOP to stand as the paragon of repressive government the party has become.

But instead the Democrats stood down. A cowardly move, perhaps, but as Floyd says in his post, the Demcorats “cop to cowardice to cover up complicity.” (This criticism exempts Rush Holt, Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold and the others who were willing to fight, but whose swords were taken from them.)

Am I sounding a tad angry? Is my natural lefty populism showing through? What do you expect when a party that has been elected to reverse six years of domestic neglect, foreign misadventure and religious pandering manages to cave on the most important of issues and refuses to truly engage the public on several others (universal health care, anyone?).

The game, of course, is rigged. We are not likely to see a viable progressive third-party presence running at the national level. The system affords just two choices — bad and dangerous. Democrats may be bad, but the current crop of Republican candidates are downright dangerous.

I may not be ready for a return of Clinton corporatism, but I can’t see how a Rudy Giuliani presidency would be good for America or for the world — and he may be the best of this ugly lot of Republican wannabes.

So I and too many others will vote for a candidate come November 2008 that we don’t like because we dislike the other major candidate more. And then we’ll complain about our lack of choices for four years and do it again.

Is this any way to run a democracy?

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Reasons to be cheerfulabout clean elections

A Saturday story in the Portland Herald Press details a Maine report on its clean elections program that offers an example of why supporters of public financing in New Jersey are so hot to have the pilot program here work. The 14th legislative district, which includes Cranbury, Jamesburg, Monroe and South Brunswick, was chosen as one of three pilot districts this year. Assembly members Bill Baroni, a Republican, and Linda Greenstein, a Democrat, are co-sponsors of the clean-elections program and probably the Legislature’s biggest backers.

According to the Maine paper, the 11-year-old clean-elections law “has encouraged more people to seek office and boosted the number of challengers who take on incumbents.” The law has helped control “direct spending by legislative candidates, but not indirect campaign spending by special interests” because “political action committees and political parties are spending more to help or hurt candidates.”

This should not be a surprise — nor should it be used to damn the law. Interest group ads were a prominent feature of the last presidential race and have become a staple of races for all level of office. One option is for clean elections legislation to provide a boost in funds to candidates targeted by independent groups or those who run against candidates who opt out of the system.

The goal of public financing, however, is not just to reduce costs. Privately financed campaigns already cost the public a lot, though those costs are hard to quantify (pay-to-play contracts, corruption, access to legislators). Public financing breaks this connection, while also increasing participation.

“I think the most significant findings are that the act is encouraging first-time candidates to run for office” and allowing challengers to run competitive races, said Jonathan Wayne, executive director of the state ethics commission.

From 1990 through 2000, the number of general-election legislative candidates averaged 349, the report says. That number jumped to 391 candidates in 2004 and to 386 in 2006, as public financing became more popular.

Adopted by Maine voters in a 1996 referendum, the Clean Election Act first made public financing available in legislative races in 2000 and in gubernatorial campaigns in 2002. In last year’s general election, 81 percent of the candidates for the Legislature used the Clean Election Fund to pay for their races. So did three of the five gubernatorial candidates who were on the ballot in November.

Let’s hope the New Jersey pilot works and that clean elections can be expanded to the entire Legislature next time out.

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A temporary — but necessary — fix

Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts has been making the case for clean-elections reform (which the Assembly, in its infinite wisdom, tabled on second reading today) and I think we all need to listen.

Clean Elections are investments in democracy. By providing public financing to candidates, special-interest money is taken out of the political process so legislators will not feel beholden to large contributors and their agendas.

Under Clean Elections, qualified candidates who agree to forgo large private contributions and follow strict spending limits receive public financing for their campaigns. This frees candidates from having to chase campaign donations from big-money special interests and lobbyists. It enables candidates ample opportunity to
conduct their campaigns with the interest of their constituents as their top priority.

The legislation, unfortunately, is just a Band-Aid. It’s not nearly comprehensive enough, as The Asbury Park Press, has pointed out — though the Shore-area paper is wrong to call for it’s defeat.

Allowing the flawed program to die off would not lead to a better, fuller experiment in two years, but would signal the end of the experiment, leaving the current system of legalized bribery in place for the foreseeable future. And while pay-to-play bans and other ethics reforms will undoubtedly help some, they only restrict and redirect the flow of money; candidates would still be beholden to the private interests who pay for their campaigns.

The Legislature needs to approve A-100 and then move immediately to improve it — if not for the 2007 election cycle, then for 2009.

To do anything less would be irresponsible.

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