Beyond campaign finance reform

Jess Mancini
Several groups continue to endorse campaign finance reforms in West Virginia.

House Bill 4050 and Senate Bill 240 call for a voluntary system where candidates agree to follow contribution and spending limits. Public funds would be made available to House and Senate candidates in single-member districts beginning in 2010 and to other legislative candidates starting in 2012. The legislation was sponsored by Democrats and Republicans. The only sponsoring lawmaker from Wood County was John Ellem, R-10th.

The aim is to prevent money from special interest groups and large contributors from impacting the political process.

Supporters of the legislation include the League of Women Voters, the AFL-CIO in West Virginia, the Catholic Conference of West Virginia, Common Cause of West Virginia, the National Association of Social Workers, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, the West Virginia Citizen Action Group, the West Virginia Council of Churches and the West Virginia Education Association.

Candidates would agree to collect a number of contributions from registered voters in their districts, raise no private contributions and spend none of their own money. Details in the bills are available from the Legislature’s Web site.

According to the Citizens for Clean Elections, eight states have adopted programs for the public financing for all or some state offices. It’s normal in Maine and Arizona to run for office without campaign contributions, the group said.

“In Maine and Arizona, public financing is delivering on its promise of more voter control and sounder public policies,” said Carol Warren, a coordinator for the Citizens for Clean Elections. “For example, Maine passed a progressive health care initiative that enables all but its wealthiest families to purchase prescription drugs on the Medicaid list for the Medicaid price, saving them as much as 60 percent off market prices. Unfortunately, in West Virginia the real promise of the 2003 legislation requiring our state to negotiate directly with drug companies for lower prices was never realized because of the overwhelming influence of the pharmaceutical lobby.”

I guess it could boil down to money being the root of all evil.

In West Virginia, reformers point to Don Blankenship, the chief executive officer of Massey Energy, and his financial aid to And for the Sake of the Kids, a special interest 537 group that targeted former state Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw in 2004. (Remember the McGraw rant in the television ad that photographers were following him to take ugly pictures for the sake of ugliness.) McGraw, who lost to Republican Brent Benjamin, also was in the sights of the state and national chambers of commerce, business organizations and insurance companies.

The complaint was Blankenship’s money bought the election. Novelist John Grisham said the McGraw-Benjamin race was the basis of his new book, ‘‘The Appeal.’’

Before saying anything more, judicial elections need reforms beyond campaign financing. Judges should be appointed for life rather than elected because of political influences. Any election for any political office, partisan or non-partisan, is impacted by politics. Judicial elections and candidates are not immune from politics and if anyone tells you they are, you better check your wallet.

State senators on Tuesday debated the non-partisan election of Supreme Court justices. Only seven states have partisan election of judges like West Virginia. I suspect Democratic candidates for the Supreme Court want that D after their name on the ballot, particularly in the southern counties where even the cows are Democrats.

Contact Jess Mancini at jmancini@newsandsentinel.com