Candidates who take public campaign funds can’t have taxpayers kick in extra money to match what their privately funded opponents spend. The U.S. Supreme Court says so.
The theory behind the trigger for extra public financing was that it leveled the playing field for candidates with limited resources who run against well-financed opponents. And, it was an incentive to get more candidates to sign up for public campaign funding. However, the nation’s top court has concluded that offering such an equalizer violates constitutional protections on free speech.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled 5-4 against an Arizona campaign financing equalization law, which is similar to a system in Albuquerque for mayoral and City Council elections.
In Albuquerque, candidates can get an initial distribution of money based on the number of voters in their district. If they are outspent by privately funded opponents, they can come back to city coffers for “matching funds” to keep their campaigns on equal footing. Albuquerque voters adopted this public-financing system in 2005.
New Mexico Turn Around, a conservative political action committee, is suing Albuquerque City Clerk Amy Bailey in U.S. District Court over the practice. The group says it won’t spend money opposing council candidates it would like to defeat because that would only trigger that much more public money to the people they oppose. The policy effectively neutralizes their own spending and right of free political speech.
The nonprofit PAC says the system violates the First and 14th Amendments to the Constitution and “creates a chilling effect on New Mexico Turn Around’s free exercise of protected speech, and imposes a climate of self-censorship that is inimical to our American heritage of unfettered political discourse.”
Based on the Arizona decision the high court would appear to agree, and whether or not one agrees with the ruling, it’s the law of the land.
Based on the decision, and barring some legal strategy that isn’t apparent, the city would be well advised to fold its cards and save taxpayers the cost of attorney fees to defend against the PAC’s lawsuit.
This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
