Morning Call, November 16, 2007
with help from Barry Kauffman
This is Fair Elections Action Week. This year also is the 100th anniversary of the Tillman Act, promoted by President Theodore Roosevelt, as an effort to protect common Americans' free speech rights from being drowned out by wealthy special interests.
Since then, states and municipalities moved to further protect their elections and governments from the corrupting influences of campaign dollars. In recent decades many have begun to implement systems of ''citizen-owned elections.''
Pennsylvania, however, remains one of only a dozen states mired in the backwaters of 19th century politics, failing to even restrict the amount of money that individuals and political committees can give to candidates. Five-figure political contributions are illegal in most places, but in Pennsylvania five- and even six-figure contributions are increasingly common. Special interests with business before our government are paying the campaign tabs of elected officials. Why? Because it works. At minimum, they provide preferred access to power.
On Nov. 6, we saw another dangerous manifestation of this problem. According to media and other reports, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Tom Saylor raised over $290,000 for his retention race. Today the bulk of judicial campaign funds come from lawyers, legal industry PACs, and people from large corporations that have issues before the courts. When Pennsylvanians appear in court they shouldn't have to worry whether the other party's attorney gave a larger contribution than their own attorney. Pennsylvania needs to eliminate this factor from its judicial system.
North Carolina recently confronted this problem and reined it in. Through the Judicial Campaign Reform Act, it created a voluntary system of public financing for judicial candidates. A poll by the North Carolina Center for Voter Education revealed that 78 percent believed campaign contributions influence judges' decisions ''a great deal'' or ''some.''
Nearly a decade ago, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court conducted a similar survey with even more resounding results: 85 percent of Pennsylvanians favored restricting campaign contributions to judges to $1,000; 80 percent favored limiting the amount that judicial candidates could spend; and 77 percent favored providing public financing to judicial candidates that refuse campaign contributions. But the Legislature refused to respond.
The influence of cash on judicial campaigns has garnered national attention. According to Robert Barnes of The Washington Post, the money raised by Pennsylvania Supreme Court candidates (now in excess of $5 million) has easily eclipsed Pennsylvania' previous judicial fundraising records. Federal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer declared that ''the rising demands on judges to raise money for their expensive campaigns … could lead to the impression that the courthouse door ''is open to some rather than the door is open to all.'' It's time to knock down that door completely and support publicly funded, Citizen-Owned Elections.
In 1985, the state House of Representatives passed House Bill 1379, which would have done this, but the Senate let it die. Since then, other states moved forward. Meanwhile, the integrity of Pennsylvania's elections spirals downward. Many reform organizations, including Common Cause/PA, support a merit-based judicial appointment system. But we must now recognize the critical need to have clean elections as long as we elect judges.
Pennsylvanians should follow North Carolina and pass a practical solution. Pennsylvania should enact a system wherein judges' loyalty is to the public -- not to the lawyers, politicians and corporate fat cats that fund their campaigns. Pennsylvanians should encourage their legislators to support Citizen-Owned Elections for our judges. To achieve clean citizen-owned judicial elections, Common Cause/PA proposes that candidates run under a system that limits campaign contributions, restricts candidate expenditures, and provides partial public financing of campaigns. Pennsylvanians who want courts unbiased by campaign contributions should back this effort. Pennsylvanians also should support the more general, but broader, HB-1720 introduced by Rep. David Levdansky, D-Allegheny, which would limit campaign contributions to all candidates in Pennsylvania.
Who will own our elections? Who will own our government? The choice is ours and the time for action is now.
Jake Miller of Nesquehoning is a teacher at Panther Valley High School and chair of the Common Cause/Pennsylvania Citizen-Owned Elections Project Team. Barry Kauffman is the Executive Director of CC/PA
