Voters always complain about politicians being beholden to special interests. If they want to change that, they can support public financing for campaigns.
American politics will never be perfectly clean because politicians represent and reflect imperfect humans.It’s actually more of a hope — even a demand — than an expectation. Citizens have become accustomed to expect the worst because of scandal after scandal.In a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California, adults were asked whether they thought the state government was “run by a few big interests looking out for themselves” or was “run for the benefit of all of the people.
Look, running for office costs barrels of money, especially in California. The money must come from somewhere. And as I’ve written many times, either the public buys the politicians or the special interests eagerly will — and often do. Brown’s measure required more substantive public disclosure of campaign contributions and spending. But he was afraid opponents would attack it as a scheme to spend tax dollars on politicians. So he wrote into the initiative the current restriction on public financing.
Umberg says he’s not particularly sold on public financing but wants to allow local entities to experiment with it if they choose.
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