Nurses Propose Donor Limits

After taking a major role in defeating Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ballot initiatives last year, California nurses Monday proposed one that would strictly limit spending on political campaigns.

The measure would ban corporate donations to candidates and to ballot-measure fights, and create a system of public financing for those running for office. Candidates who rejected the financing could accept only relatively small contributions -- $500 for legislative races, $1,000 for statewide offices.

To pay for the system, the nurses plan to propose raising the state’s bank and corporate tax rate or adding a new tax on oil pumped from California wells.

The initiative would allow candidates to spend unlimited sums of their own money on their own campaigns, as current state law permits. There are no restrictions on donations to ballot measure campaigns under current law, though contributions to candidates are capped. The caps are far less stringent than what the nurses are contemplating.

The initiative is being proposed by the California Nurses Assn., a union of 65,000 registered nurses who last year garnered attention with protests at the governor’s appearances. The union, angry that the governor tried to repeal requirements for more nurses in state hospitals, emerged as one of Schwarzenegger’s most vocal and effective foils in the campaign for the November special election.

The proposal would limit union donations to candidates, but not initiative campaigns.

Rose Ann DeMoro, the union’s executive director, said she instructed attorneys to develop “the most far-reaching” initiative that could pass legal muster.

“You can’t care for people in a corrupt political system,” DeMoro said, adding that people go into nursing to help others.

After a review of the proposal by the state attorney general’s office, the nurses would have about eight weeks to gather the roughly 600,000 signatures of registered voters needed to place it on the November ballot.

Courts have invalidated past attempts to limit contributions to ballot-measure campaigns, finding they inhibit 1st Amendment free-speech protections.

California Chamber of Commerce President Allan Zaremberg called the proposed ban on corporate donations to ballot measures “blatantly unconstitutional.”

The nurses’ proposal says California’s current system “diminishes the free speech rights of a majority of voters and candidates whose voices are drowned out by those who can afford to monopolize the arena of paid political communications.”

“This is essentially a test case,” said attorney Fredric D. Woocher, who took the lead in writing the initiative. “We believe we have a record that these corporate contributions have so overwhelmed the process that they in fact threaten to undermine the democratic system.”

The nurses’ initiative, the California Nurses Clean Money and Fair Elections Act of 2006, would incorporate parts of a bill by Assemblywoman Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley). Under her bill, pending in the Assembly, candidates could finance their campaigns the traditional way. But those who agreed to what Hancock called the “clean-money” system would receive tax funds for their campaigns.

“Clean money is the reform that makes all other reform possible,” Hancock said.

She said she was unaware that the nurses were introducing their initiative Monday, but thought that the prospect of such a far-reaching measure might help her bill win passage.

“Legislators will see this is a very serious effort,” Hancock said. The initiative says that Assembly candidates who agreed to public financing of their campaigns would receive $250,000 for their primary, and $400,000 for a general election. Gubernatorial candidates would receive $10 million for primary or special election races, and $15 million for the general election. Campaigns typically cost far more.