The Center for Competitive Politics criticized as a proven failure and unconstitutional the recently-passed bill to implement taxpayer financed judicial campaigns in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin state legislature passed the bill Thursday and Gov. Jim Doyle is expected to sign the measure.
“This program will do nothing to reduce money spent in campaigns for the Supreme Court, while penalizing the free speech of candidates who decide not to accept a government handout,” said Center for Competitive Politics President Sean Parnell. “The U.S. Supreme Court has made clear in its rulings that giving advantages to some candidates based on the free exercise of the First Amendment by others is not permissible.”
In Arizona, a federal judge has preliminarily ruled that a similar “rescue fund” provision was unconstitutional because it penalized non-participating who spent unlimited amounts of lawfully-raised campaign contributions by giving additional funding to participating candidates. In Connecticut, a federal judge similarly struck down that state’s system of taxpayer financed political campaigns because of a similar “rescue funds” provision. The Center for Competitive Politics filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Arizona case, McComish v. Bennett, and intends to file a brief in the Connecticut case as well. Both cases are currently pending.
Wisconsin’s existing, and less extensive, taxpayer funding program for state legislative races has anemic taxpayer support: only 5 percent of taxpayers used the check-off option in 2006 to allow their money to fund campaigns, a 1 percent drop from 2005. Taxpayers will be on the hook for as much as $3.5 million per Supreme Court election, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
“This bill will not reduce perceived corruption or interest group involvement in Wisconsin’s judicial process,” Parnell said. “Organized interest groups simply mobilize to help favored candidates secure qualifying donations under these programs in other states, and the government cannot restrict constitutionally-protected issue ads from independent groups.”