Neither the Supreme Court nor Congress is likely to change course anytime soon. In the meantime, something needs to be done.
Public financing of campaigns, something I didn’t always embrace, has clearly made a difference in Los Angeles city elections. It has given candidates who couldn’t self-fund, or couldn’t count on special interests to fund an “independent expenditure” campaign on their behalf, a chance to be heard. To broaden that opportunity, local jurisdictions should institute or expand public financing laws as much as their treasuries will allow.However, there aren’t enough funds in any city budget to completely level the playing field against special-interest campaigns. In Los Angeles alone, it would take tens of millions of dollars per election to adequately fund community candidates.
So as long as Citizens United and its analogs are in force, fundraising limits on candidate-controlled committees should be lifted to give independent-minded or community-based candidates a credible chance to win.
It is patently unfair for a candidate to be strictly limited in the amount he or she can raise from a supporter, while his opponent can benefit from massive, unlimited expenditures on his or her behalf. A community-based candidate does not have to match the spending of his better-funded opponent dollar for dollar, but he needs to have a sufficient war chest to be heard in the electoral competition.
Ugh.