Initiative could become law in 2008, then vanish in 2010

JOHN CREED

June 05, 2008 at 8:53AM AKST

A “Clean Elections” initiative, the result of a statewide voter petition drive that ended in January, will appear on Alaska’s Aug. 26 primary ballot.

If approved by voters, this law would allow candidates to choose to run for state elective office using public funds — as long as candidates pledge to forego private campaign contributions.

The Clean Elections ballot initiative is designed to drive out the big money that has been corrupting government in Alaska for years, as one politico after another has landed in prison over the past year — and more could well follow.

Supporters are cautiously optimistic that Alaska voters will approve the Clean Elections initiative in August. Nevertheless, Clean Elections backers worry that big money from outside the state may fill opposition coffers and fuel a massive summer ad campaign that could defeat the measure.

Even if opposition money from wealthy Outside donors doesn’t materialize this summer, and even if the Clean Elections initiative passes handily in August, an even bigger threat to cleaning up political campaigns hangs over Alaska.

Earlier this year, backers of another and completely separate ballot initiative gathered enough signatures to appear on the 2010 ballot. If voters approve this so-called “Anti-Corruption” initiative, it would wipe out the Clean Elections law even if voters approve it this August.

That means Alaskans face a rocky road in their quest to clean up one of the nation’s most politically scandalous states. Indeed, Alaskans are being investigated, indicted, tried, convicted and sent to prison for political corruption crimes that include fraud, conspiracy and bribery in connection with the oil industry and other corporate interests seeking to influence public policy.

With the current disreputable focus on Alaska both instate and nationally, one thing is certain: Alaskans from across the political spectrum are fed up, indeed outraged, as revelations continue to cascade into the public eye about crimes the state’s politicos have been committing behind closed doors for years.

In fact, the state’s Clean Elections movement today enjoys broad bipartisan support, ranging from former Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles to former Gov. Wally Hickel, a Republican.

State legislators in both parties as well as Gov. Sarah Palin, a conservative Republican, also support the Clean Elections initiative.

With the public’s trust in elected officials so shattered these days in Alaska, it may not be wise to oppose Clean Elections, which could explain why some sitting elected officials statewide remain strangely silent even as they watch their mother’s milk of politics, campaign cash, potentially drying up amid this grassroots campaign finance reform movement.

At the recent state Democratic Convention in Palmer, Diane Benson, who’s running for Congress, was one of the few candidates who supported campaign finance reform in their stump speech, although no one publicly opposed it.  

Other politicians have voiced their opposition to Clean Elections publicly, including Rep. Bob Roses, R-Anchorage.

“I don’t think the Alaska public is as concerned with who the contributors are as much as they are concerned about who is trying to hide contributions and why they are hiding them,” Roses wrote in an Anchorage Daily News commentary last year.

But Hickel, also a former Interior Secretary, later pointed out that the Clean Elections model “is being used in seven other states and has reduced the stranglehold incumbents and special interests can apply to the democratic process. The cynics say that money is the golden rule of politics. Let’s prove them wrong.”

Those seven states Hickel refers to include Arizona, a Republican stronghold that has elected Gov. Janet Napolitano twice as a Clean Elections candidate.

In Maine, which is more favorable to Democrats, publicly funded Clean Elections candidates are campaigning more on public policy issues rather than spending hours sidling up to special interests, to whom they become more beholden, in search of private cash to run their campaigns.

Polls show that Clean Elections laws remain popular in every state that’s used publicly financed election campaigns for several election cycles.

Polling in Alaska also shows strong support for the Clean Elections concept.

In fact, much of Alaska’s opposition to Clean Elections, such as the anti-corruption ballot initiative, appears to be funded largely by Outside money, although those money sources are difficult to track.

Clean Elections proponents say it’s easier to hide funding sources from Outside donors for initiative campaigns—either for or against—than for actual candidate campaign contributions.

Banning public money
At first glance, at least some of the “Anti-Corruption” initiative, which gathered enough voter signatures in Alaska earlier this year to qualify for the 2010 statewide ballot, sounds like good government at work.

For example, the Anti-Corruption initiative would prohibit individuals from leaving elective office to then go directly into securing a government contract. So far so good, right?

The Anti-Corruption initiative also would ban government contractors from contributing to political campaigns. Who could be against that, except special interests seeking undue influence?

But here’s the rub: The anti-corruption initiative also would ban all public money from funding political campaigns in Alaska.

Bingo!

That means a successful anti-corruption ballot initiative in 2010 would wipe out the Clean Elections ballot initiative even if voters approve it on the August primary ballot.

Next: Outside money could defeat clean elections in Alaska.

John Creed is a humanities/journalism professor at Chukchi College, the Kotzebue branch of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Myles Creed just completed his freshman year at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. E-mail them at zfjc@uaf.edu and mcreed@lclark.edu.