For Politics, an Impolitic Idea

Chairman Dan Stanford of the state Fair Political Practices Commission says that he is committed to cleaning up politics in California. Good. Much could be done. But he has picked a cockeyed way of going about it.

Stanford is proposing that political campaign consultants be licensed and required to comply with a variety of disclosure requirements. He wants to know, for instance, whether the political consultant has a financial stake in the outcome of the campaign. Of course he does. If his campaigns are winners, he gets more business. If his campaigns are losers, he doesn’t.

Under the proposed legislation, a consultant would be required to sign a contract with the candidate, and would have to review with his boss any campaign literature or advertising distributed in his name. This would be to prevent the incidence of “disgruntled losers left holding the bag after an unsuccessful campaign,” said Stanford, who got a 3-1 endorsement of the proposal from the commission not long ago. Violators would lose their licenses to practice a profession for which no standards would be established.

No matter what rules are adopted, however, only one person should be held responsible for what happens in a campaign, and that is the candidate himself. If the candidate hires an incompetent consultant who makes dumb decisions, the voters can decide on his judgment in the voting booth. If the candidate thinks that he got ripped off by the consultant, he can sue. Indeed, if a consultant is ripping off his candidates, the word will get around to other prospective clients faster than the state can say “investigate.”

If the commission really wants to reform political campaigns in California, the best way to start is by not wasting any more time on this silly idea.