{"id":7835,"date":"2017-04-19T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7835"},"modified":"2017-04-19T00:09:21","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T04:09:21","slug":"should-you-take-public-campaign-financing-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=7835","title":{"rendered":"Should You Take Public Campaign Financing? Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"
    \n
  1. By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    There are a number of factors that argue either for entering the county\u2019s public financing system or staying out.\u00a0 Let\u2019s list the things that might cause candidates to get in first.<\/p>\n

    Reasons to Get In<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. You Won\u2019t Take Corporate or Developer Money<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      If you don\u2019t want to take corporate or developer money, public financing can be a great way to replace those funds with taxpayer money.\u00a0 Your author ran a series of simulations of what county candidates would have raised in the 2006, 2010 and 2014 cycles if public financing had been available.\u00a0 The huge majority of candidates would have raised less money with public financing than what they actually raised through the traditional system, but there were two big exceptions.\u00a0 Phil Andrews would have more than doubled his take in his 2006 council race and his 2014 Executive race if he had had access to public funds.\u00a0 And Marc Elrich\u2019s receipts would have increased by 55% in 2006, 71% in 2010 and 66% in 2014 with public money.\u00a0 Both Andrews and Elrich refused developer money and Andrews turned away PAC money as well.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a coincidence that Andrews was the author of the public financing bill.<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. You Have a Large Pre-Existing Base of Supporters<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Under public financing, the key determinant of fundraising is not connections to business or labor or self-financing capacity.\u00a0 It\u2019s the number of in-county residents you can convince to contribute to your campaign.\u00a0 That\u2019s it.\u00a0 For funds received from those folks, the government will pay 75% or more of your campaign receipts, at least until you hit the public match cap.\u00a0 See the thresholds and caps below.<\/p>\n

        \"\"<\/p>\n

        Most incumbents start with supporter bases and should be able to meet the match thresholds if running for reelection.\u00a0 Over the last three cycles, only two incumbents \u2013 Mike Subin (2006) and Duchy Trachtenberg (2010) \u2013 would have failed to meet them.\u00a0 It is probably not a coincidence that this system was designed and passed by incumbents!\u00a0 State legislators running for county office have a good shot at qualifying for matches too.<\/p>\n

        Evan Glass is a good example of a non-incumbent who could qualify.\u00a0 Glass had 396 in-county individual contributors in his 2014 District 5 race, enough to qualify if he were running at-large.\u00a0 He raised $159,235 through August 2014, but would have raised $183,382 if public financing were available.\u00a0 With one election under his belt (a VERY close loss) and continued involvement in the community since then, public financing is a real consideration in his case.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. You Can Afford Seed Money<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          If you don\u2019t start with a large base, you will need a mechanism to raise small contributions.\u00a0 Otherwise, you will get trapped by not having enough in-county contributions to qualify, which means you won\u2019t have the money to set up a campaign infrastructure, which makes it harder to raise small contributions and so on.\u00a0 The public financing system allows candidates (including spouses) to self-fund up to $12,000.\u00a0 You should do that as soon as you can and use the money to set up a website, buy an email list and start running social media ads.\u00a0 That will help you meet the match thresholds and keep your campaign going.\u00a0 Or, if you don\u2019t mind having the incumbents hate you, you can get a big email list for free!<\/a><\/p>\n

            \n
          1. You Will Benefit from an IE<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            During the District 20 Senate appointment process, a group of unions and liberal groups announced that they were joining together \u201cto achieve a progressive sweep\u201d<\/a> in local elections.\u00a0 That means there is a real possibility of a labor-backed independent expenditure (IE) campaign to support left-wing candidates.\u00a0 That could help ease the financial burden on those candidates unlikely to attract significant business support.\u00a0 But counting on the IE is risky \u2013 there\u2019s no guarantee that there will be one, that it will be effective and that it will support you.\u00a0 After all, there could be lots of progressive candidates for an IE to choose from next year.<\/p>\n

              \n
            1. You Are a Republican<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

              One would think that Republican candidates would collect tons of business money, but that has not been true recently in Montgomery County.\u00a0 Most business interests are non-ideological.\u00a0 They want to pick winners who will support their agenda once elected and they don\u2019t care very much about party labels.\u00a0 (One of the untold stories in this county is the significant volume of political money contributed by Republican business people to Democratic candidates.)\u00a0 But public financing gives Republican candidates another option \u2013 they can go to their fellow party members.\u00a0 There are more than 120,000 registered Republicans in MoCo<\/a> and nearly 60,000 of them voted in the 2014 general election<\/a>.\u00a0 Good luck getting elected here during the Trump era, but you can at least be financially competitive in the public system.\u00a0 Finally, let\u2019s remember that the most successful user of public financing in recent Maryland history was none other than Republican Larry Hogan, who is now Governor.<\/p>\n

              So are you convinced that you should enter public financing?\u00a0 Well, not so fast.\u00a0 In Part Three, we will examine reasons to stay out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

              By Adam Pagnucco. There are a number of factors that argue either for entering the county\u2019s public financing system or staying out.\u00a0 Let\u2019s list the things that might cause candidates to get in first. Reasons to Get In You Won\u2019t Take Corporate or Developer Money If you don\u2019t want to take corporate or developer money, … Continue reading Should You Take Public Campaign Financing? Part Two<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,138],"tags":[1545,1908],"class_list":["post-7835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-campaign-finance","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-public-campaign-financing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-22n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7835"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7844,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7835\/revisions\/7844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}