By Adam Pagnucco.
This is the tenth(!) post on Montgomery County’s public financing system, making it one of my longest series ever. But public financing deserves the attention. We were the first county in Maryland to use it for our local elections and it is now spreading to Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Howard County and Prince George’s County.
If you are a reader from one of these jurisdictions or another that is considering using public financing, this post is for you. Here is what we have learned about this system from two cycles of using it.
Public financing is not cheap but its costs are manageable.
So far, our county has spent $8.8 million on public matching funds for candidates in public financing. We have over a million people and lively local politics, so think about what that number would look like in your jurisdiction. Our county government manages these expenses through a segregated public elections fund and regularly allocates money to it through annual budgets. That’s a good approach for making sure that expenditures don’t cause budget issues in election years.
Lots of candidates use it and win.
Over the last two cycles, almost half of our county candidates used public financing. In 2018, 7 of our 10 winners in county elections used it. In 2022, 8 of our 12 winners in county elections used it. Every incumbent using public financing to run for reelection to their current seat won. (Part of the reason for that is that every incumbent running for their current seat won period, but I digress.) The system may increase political competition overall, which is a good thing for voters. I will never forget the publicly financed candidates in 2018 who told me some version of the quote below.
Without public financing, I wouldn’t be running. I don’t know any developers, I have no connections to unions and I’m not independently wealthy. But I can knock on doors and talk to people all day long. With this system, I have a chance to win.
Female, Black and Latino candidates can do well in public financing.
Women and non-White candidates sometimes struggle to raise campaign money. But so far, our experience has been that their fundraising gap is smaller in public financing than in the traditional system.
Public financing amplifies some areas over others.
In our county, the most politically active area (our Democratic Crescent) accounted for the majority of contributions to publicly financed candidates even though it has less than a quarter of the county’s population. White and wealthy localities had much higher contribution rates than less wealthy and majority-minority areas. Think about which parts of your jurisdiction have the highest turnout rates, the most money and the highest percentage of White people. Those areas will contribute the most money to your publicly financed candidates.
Public financing does little to curb interest group activity.
Over the last two cycles, more than $2.5 million has been spent by independent groups founded to influence our elections. That’s a huge underestimate since it does not count the political spending of preexisting groups like unions and the realtors. These groups still hold significant sway in county politics. Don’t believe for a moment that public financing will fundamentally change interest group activities in your jurisdiction.
Use of taxpayer money for elections needs safeguards.
One additional fact stands out in Montgomery County from this cycle: public financing requires attentive regulation to protect taxpayer funds. One of our publicly financed county executive candidates, Will Jawando, has used money in federal campaign accounts to contribute to an organization that later endorsed him and compensate an individual who later worked on his publicly financed executive campaign. These issues warrant examination by regulators and voters. If a system of loopholes develops going forward that allows candidates to receive taxpayer money and leverage outside funding at the same time, that will erode the justification for taxpayers to subsidize political campaigns. The lesson here is to set up safeguards and then police them vigorously.
If you are embarking on public financing in your own jurisdiction, good luck! And I hope that we can learn from your experiences too.