Willie Brown on Proposition 68

It is truly enlightening to hear Willie Brown offer his two cents on the issue of campaign finance reform. The primary reason Sacramento is awash in dollars and in need of reform is because of what some might call the “quasi-extortion” fund-raising operation Brown has perfected while Speaker of the Assembly.

Brown’s logic is a frantic dance: In defending campaign spending limits, he casually casts aside political speech rights protected by the First Amendment. Five paragraphs later, he cloaks himself in the First Amendment in attacking the idea of bans on off-year campaign fund raising. His answer to the tainted “special-interest dollars influencing the contest”? A system similar to that “by which presidential elections are held” so that some public and private money is available in the primary contest but only public money can be used in the general election.

Yet, Brown doesn’t mind that special-interest money will influence the primaries, which is where the real race is run in most districts. Moreover, there is scant analogy between a presidential race with a handful of candidates and statewide elections with hundreds of candidates.

Equally ridiculous are the arbitrary spending limits advocated by Brown. How do you begin to compare the cost of campaigning in urban Los Angeles, one of the most costly media markets in the nation, with campaigning in Barstow, which is nowhere near any media market?

Brown’s wisdom finds complement in the nearby companion piece (“Curb Spending, Limit Influence-Peddling”) penned by Fredric Woocher, a proponent of Proposition 68, the initiative built around public financing. What a timely idea this is in a state facing a revenue shortfall and in an era of overwhelming public weariness with new government spending programs. Does anyone really think that taxpayers eagerly await the day when they can foot the bill for bumper stickers and campaign buttons?

Let’s face it, campaign finance reform is only going to come about when we put the small, individual contributors--the people who vote--back in control of elections. This would come about by requiring that at least 50% of a candidate’s funds be raised within the district he or she wanted to represent.

Simple, equitable, and free of arbitrary limits and public financing--this 50% threshold is true reform. And it’s the kind of reform Californians won’t get with either of the two campaign finance Band-Aids on the June 7 ballot.

REP. WILLIAM M. THOMAS

R-Bakersfield

Washington, D.C.