Barnard College political science professor Michael G. Miller takes issue with my recent op-ed on Arizona’s Citizens Clean Elections Program, in which I argue that the dearth of contested races in Arizona’s recent primaries suggests a failure of the program to transform politics as advertised, a claim bolstered by the Government Accountability Office (GAO)’s extensive study of tax-financed campaign programs in both Arizona and Maine.
Specifically, Miller says, “Wachob’s case is narrowly constructed to begin with, but more troubling, he cherry-picks sources and ignores altogether the peer-reviewed evidence produced by political scientists—including myself—much of which contradicts his claims.”
I find the accusation of cherry-picking unfair. As Miller acknowledges, I did not bring academic literature into the discussion. I can’t cherry-pick what I don’t pick at all. An op-ed, by its very nature, cannot be expected to contain a comprehensive review of the academic literature. Further, as you can see from the fact that Miller says only that “much” of the evidence challenges my view, scholarly research is unsettled on many questions in campaign financing, including on tax-financed campaign programs. A short op-ed is not the appropriate place for this ongoing and theoretical academic debate; so instead I relied on the nation’s leading authority of program evaluation – the GAO – and the Center’s original research. I think that choice is entirely fair.
The bone Miller really wants to pick is with the GAO study, which he calls “spectacularly flawed, to the point that most of its findings cannot be taken as evidence of anything.” Miller’s criticisms are detailed in a 2011 Election Law Journal article, “After the GAO Report: What Do We Know About Public Election Funding?”
As is often the case with media portrayals of academic articles, however, the op-ed version of Miller’s critique of GAO is bolder than the article it draws from. In fact, Miller’s Election Law Journal article accepts GAO’s finding that tax-financed campaigns generally do not increase the number of candidates: “In short, while Clean Elections may not change the mean number or demographic appearance of candidates in legislative elections, it may lead to experienced candidates running.” (p. 12)
Thus, Miller’s own research agrees with the core point of my article: tax-financed campaigns were advertised as a way to bring new people into politics, and they haven’t. My article quoted an advocate for tax-financed campaigns, Public Citizen, as saying these programs would help “[o]rdinary citizens who want to serve in government [that] don’t have access to money and are locked out of the system, unable to afford running for office.”
That has not happened, as even Miller seems to admit. And while Miller is “not clear why Wachob focuses on primary elections,” it’s for the simple reason that the primaries just happened. The evidence I cited also includes general elections, but last month’s primaries are noteworthy because they add yet another data point to reinforce the general consensus that tax-financed campaigns do not increase the number of candidates or change candidates’ backgrounds or demographics. The hyperbolic rhetoric of “clean elections” advocates needs a reality check, and the recent Arizona primary seemed an appropriate time for it.
I wrote that tax-financed campaign programs have “failed to bring meaningful change to politics,” a line Miller quotes in his response. But from how he disputes my claim, it seems we might just have differing ideas of what is meaningful. For example, Miller says that, “while incumbents are still winning, they are doing so by significantly lower margins when met by publicly funded challengers.”
That’s all well and good, and I agree those findings have a place in the public debate over these programs. But I will not apologize for pointing out that this is a much, much lower bar than what advocates of tax-financing have advertised for years. I wasn’t talking about statistical significance when I wrote about “meaningful change” – I was talking about change that average Americans can perceive, and that actually affects the makeup of legislatures and the policy they produce.
Proponents of tax-financed campaigns told us that democracy had become a plutocracy, that politicians represented special interests and ignored their constituents, that campaign fundraising was polluting and corrupting government at every step of the process. We were told that tax-financed campaigns would fix all of that.
14 years later, and we’re supposed to be happy that “while incumbents are still winning, they are doing so by significantly lower margins when met by publicly funded challengers”? That’s a bar so low you could trip over it, and I’m willing to bet that it’s not what Arizonans had in mind when they passed the Citizens Clean Elections Act. That’s why the Center’s research focuses on evaluating claims made by proponents of these programs. And what we’ve found – from the unchanged voting behavior of tax-financed candidates, to the persistent involvement of special interests in policymaking, to the scores of corrupt politicians exploiting public financing schemes for their own gain – is that their predictions have largely failed to materialize.
There’s always another study or data point you could add to the discussion. Miller’s criticism lies not with the facts I presented but with the context he wishes I would provide. But there is more “context” here than simply another academic study. It matters what people were sold when they voted for tax-financed campaigns. It isn’t what Miller is selling today.
