When I ran for the Minnesota House of Representatives for the first time in 2006, I spent $21,000. At the same time in Texas, where campaign spending was already out of control, the cousin of a friend ran for the same position — the Texas House of Representatives. She spent $250,000 in her primary race and a half-million dollars in the general.
I have told this story many times to express my gratitude for Minnesota's election financing system that allows an ordinary citizen like me to run. But last week we took a major step backward. Senate and House Republicans on the State Government Finance Conference Committee voted to eliminate the campaign-finance laws that have made Minnesota a place where people from many walks of life can be elected to serve us all in St. Paul.
George Beck (who contributed to this article) and I both know the importance of good campaign-finance laws in keeping sanity in our candidate campaign funding and ensuring that our Legislature is truly representative of and responsive to the people of Minnesota. Judge Beck formerly served as the chair of the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, and I have won six elections for the Legislature.
It is constitutionally permissible for a state to impose candidate spending limits if they are voluntarily agreed to by the candidates. Almost every candidate does agree to these spending limits because Minnesota offers a public subsidy program. Funding for this program is based on the number of taxpayers in a district who check off the box on their Minnesota taxes to have the state commit $5 to the fund. Having both candidates agree to the limits creates a reasonable and fair playing field in our campaigns. Taxpayers voluntarily agree to participate in this program.
If this program ends, within a few years we won't recognize elections in Minnesota. There will be no spending limits, and the costs to run a campaign for Legislature will skyrocket as candidates try to outdo each other in spending. This will eliminate candidates who don't have access to this wealth.
Very shortly after that, we won't recognize our Legislature. It will no longer be representative of the people. Only those who have access to private wealth or from special interests will be elected. We have already seen this happen in other states, as mentioned above in Texas, and in larger races. The power of money will control over the will of the people. Minnesota will join other "pay to play" states as voter cynicism increases.
At the federal level, the Citizens United decision has opened the door to vast sums of outside money, including dark money from unknown sources, flooding our most hotly contested races. Because of our campaign funding limits, this money can only be used without the candidate's knowledge. These independent expenditures are a growing problem: In 2016, they outpaced candidate campaign spending in state legislative races overall.
Outside money is a federal issue that Minnesota cannot fix. Our responsibility is to continue to keep our candidate expenditures under reasonable limits and hence make the majority of our elections accessible to all who would like to run. The public subsidy (which has been in effect for 40 years) provided just 19 percent of the 2016 legislative candidate spending, yet this makes the difference in allowing an ordinary Minnesotan the opportunity to run.
With our nationally respected public subsidy program, Minnesota candidates can focus on offering their personal message and life experiences instead of focusing on outdoing each other in fundraising from special interests. And our state Legislature can mirror all of our citizens. Minnesota has a proud history of electing a representative Legislature. The pending legislation ends our modest attempt at public financing in Minnesota and is a blow to democracy. Let's keep our Legislature independent of big money.
Carolyn Laine, DFL-Columbia Heights, is the assistant minority leader in the Minnesota Senate. George Beck is a retired administrative law judge who served as chair of the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board until 2016, is currently chair of Minnesota Citizens for Clean Elections and is a partner in the State of Democracy Coalition led by Common Cause Minnesota.
