Voters Uphold Public Funding of City Political Campaigns

In a local election that drew state and national interest, Long Beach voters rejected a measure that would have watered down the city’s political reform ordinance by eliminating the taxpayer financing of campaigns.

Proposition R, opposed by the League of Women Voters, Common Cause and the American Assn. of Retired Persons, was defeated 53% to 47% in Tuesday’s city election, which was held concurrently with the state election.

In other local voting, the bid to head the Long Beach city prosecutor’s office was won by Tom Reeves, a principal deputy with the city attorney’s office. Reeves defeated Robert R. Recknagel, an assistant city prosecutor, after vowing during the campaign to reshape the prosecutor’s office.

Two vacancies on the City Council were also filled.

Belmont Shore real estate agent Frank Colonna defeated businessman Henry J. Meyer for one seat, and Jackie Kell, a government teacher and wife of a former mayor, defeated Brian J. Young, a full-time labor union official.

Put on the ballot by the City Council, Proposition R would have taken the teeth out of Long Beach’s campaign reform ordinance, approved by voters in 1994.

Long Beach and Los Angeles are the only two cities in California that provide candidates with tax dollars for campaigns.

So far this year, five Long Beach candidates have asked for $38,000 in matching funds. Local residents, through voluntary contributions, will pay $6,000 of that, the city the rest.

Incumbent council members claimed that open-ended financing of local elections would take money from police and other services, saying the system could potentially cost the city $800,000 or more in one election year.

But opponents contended that those cost estimates were exaggerated. They also argued that passage of Proposition R would increase the importance of financial contributions from special interests and help incumbents because of their access to such money.

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The motto of opponents was “Public money is clean money.”

“It’s clear that voters mean it when they say they want campaigns clean,” said Long Beach attorney Carol Churchill, co-president of the local chapter of the League of Women Voters and a driving force behind the effort to defeat Proposition R.

Jim Knox, executive director of California Common Cause, said defeat of Proposition R will help national efforts to implement public financing of campaigns in other cities.

“We are delighted, obviously, with the results,” Knox said in a telephone interview from his Sacramento office. “Public financing is the obvious next step in campaign finance reform. Because of that, people around the state and nation were interested in knowing whether this was something the public was really going to support, and I think the answer is yes.”

Said Councilman Les Robbins, who signed the ballot argument against Proposition R: “It was a fair fight.”

“The voters said by a slim margin they are willing to pay for the campaigns,” added Robbins, a part-time council member who is employed full time as a sergeant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “It’s up to the council now to decide where the money comes from. Unfortunately, voters approve these things without having to worry about where the money comes from.”