{"id":9852,"date":"2018-03-12T07:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9852"},"modified":"2018-03-11T18:18:58","modified_gmt":"2018-03-11T22:18:58","slug":"public-financing-geography-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9852","title":{"rendered":"Public Financing Geography, Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

This year\u2019s election cycle is the first one in which public financing is being used in MoCo\u2019s county-level races.\u00a0 That is one of many reasons why this election is historic in nature.\u00a0 So far, we know the following things about public financing: it is heavily used (especially in the Council At-Large race<\/a>), it is administratively challenging<\/a>, it requires a long time to raise money<\/a>, it is less costly than first thought<\/a> and while it creates opportunities for new candidates, it confers huge benefits on incumbents<\/a>.\u00a0 Also, as predicted, the system reduces the influence of corporate interests and PACs.\u00a0 But who is stepping into that vacuum?<\/p>\n

This week, we will explore where contributions to publicly financed candidates come from.\u00a0 Participation in the system is optional; candidates can stay in the traditional system and many of them have done so.\u00a0 Candidates in the public system may only accept contributions from individuals up to $150.\u00a0 They cannot take money from corporate entities or PACs and must limit self-financing to $12,000.\u00a0 Contributions from in-county residents are matched by the county on a sliding scale.\u00a0 For Executive candidates, a $150 in-county contribution gets a county match of $600.\u00a0 For council candidates, a $150 in-county contribution gets a county match of $450.\u00a0 Candidates must meet thresholds of in-county money raised and numbers of in-county contributors to qualify for matching funds and are subject to caps of public fund receipts.\u00a0 And if a candidate applies for matching funds and does not meet the thresholds, that person can be ruled ineligible for matching funds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To examine the origins of contributions in public financing, we accumulated the contribution records of thirteen candidates who have qualified for matching funds: County Executive candidates Marc Elrich, Rose Krasnow and George Leventhal and Council At-Large candidates Gabe Albornoz, Bill Conway, Hoan Dang, Evan Glass, Seth Grimes, Will Jawando, Danielle Meitiv, Hans Riemer, Mohammad Siddique and Chris Wilhelm.\u00a0 We did not include contributions to district-level candidates like Sidney Katz, Nancy Navarro and Reggie Oldak because their receipts will inevitably be skewed to their districts, thereby introducing a geographic bias into the data.\u00a0 We also did not include contributions to non-qualifiers because they may not ultimately receive matching funds.\u00a0 One important consideration with examining these accounts is that not all of them have last filed on the same dates.\u00a0 While some were current as of the last regular report in January, others have filed as recently as last week.\u00a0 That\u2019s because once a candidate qualifies for matching funds, they can apply for new distributions at any time through fifteen days after the general election.\u00a0 One important constraint for late starters: candidates in the system must qualify for matching funds by 45 days before the primary<\/a>.\u00a0 Since the date of this year\u2019s primary is June 26, that means the qualifying period ends on May 12.<\/p>\n

This analysis involved an examination of nearly 9,000 records.\u00a0 We asked two sets of questions.\u00a0 First, where are in-county contributions eligible for matching funds coming from and how do they compare with both the population and regular Democratic voters?\u00a0 Second, what are the differences in contribution geography between participating candidates?\u00a0 Those differences contain illuminating clues to the appeal and strategy of the candidates which could ultimately decide the election.<\/p>\n

We will begin unveiling our results in Part Two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. This year\u2019s election cycle is the first one in which public financing is being used in MoCo\u2019s county-level races.\u00a0 That is one of many reasons why this election is historic in nature.\u00a0 So far, we know the following things about public financing: it is heavily used (especially in the Council At-Large race), … Continue reading Public Financing Geography, Part One<\/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":[1545,1541,1908],"class_list":["post-9852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-campaign-finance","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-campaign-finance","tag-public-campaign-financing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2yU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9852","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=9852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9854,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9852\/revisions\/9854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}