Back in August, Massachusetts State Treasurer Shannon O'Brien
was thrilled at how the option of running as a Clean Elections
candidate for governor was changing the nature of campaigning.
She told the Boston Herald, "[Clean Elections] is liberating.
I have more time to spend with more people and new people. I was
at a Laborers Union picnic last Saturday, and I talked to and
shook hands with probably 100 people, instead of just dropping
in, saying a quick hello, shaking just a hand or two and rushing
off to some fund-raiser. I spent two hours making sure I talked
to every person there."

But until last Friday, many candidates for state office in Massachusetts
like O'Brien had all but given up on the chance to run "clean"
this year. Even though voters backed the Clean Elections initiative
by 2-1 when it was on the ballot in 1998, entrenched incumbents
in the state legislature have refused to appropriate the money
needed to fund the new system for the 2002 elections. Frustrated
by their intransigence, citizen activists led by Mass Voters for
Clean Elections and the National Voting Rights Institute, and
joined by Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, the Republican
and Green parties, and several political candidates, sued in state
court to force the legislature to act.

On Friday, the good guys won, big time. A 5-2 majority of the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court told the legislature that
under the state's constitution, they must either implement an
initiative passed by the voters, or repeal it. The court said
it would consider ways to enact the law, including appropriating
the money needed or even suspending state elections until the
legislature responds. As a result, reports the New York Times,
"the legislature is under considerable pressure" to
fund the system. A new poll by the Boston Globe and WBZ-TV poll
confirms that. About 45 percent of 400 voters surveyed said the
legislature should fund Clean Elections, while only 17 percent
said the state couldn't afford it.

If, as many observers now believe will happen, Massachusetts
finally joins Maine, Arizona and Vermont in instituting its Clean
Elections system, 2002 will be a banner year for comprehensive
campaign finance reform. Under the Clean Elections model, candidates
must collect small donations (typically $5) from many people instead
of collecting large donations from a few. Then, once they've turned
in those qualifying contributions, they're freed from the private
money chase. They get a limited and equal amount of public funding,
which is based on what it took to run a competitive race in that
district in recent elections. If they're facing a privately-financed
big-spending opponent, they can get additional matching funds.

"Revitalizing Democracy," new 48-page report just out
from the Money and Politics Implementation Project and Northeast
Action [click here to get the full text in pdf format] takes a
detailed look at the workings of Clean Elections in Maine, Arizona
and Vermont, and the results are inspiring. On four key measures
of reform, the systems delivered significant changes:

• More competition for office: more candidates ran, more women
  and people of color were able to run, and, perhaps most important,
  the number of contested races rose.

• Candidates spent much more time with voters. "It made
  me be more of a grassroots candidate," Arizona state senator
  David Peterson reported.

• The playing field was much more level. In particular, Clean
  Elections drastically narrowed the spending gap between winners
  and losers, as well as between incumbents and challengers.

• The role of moneyed special interests was reduced. Private
  spending, per candidate, dropped 17% in Arizona and 51% in Maine.
  And a big chunk of both legislatures -- one fifth in Arizona
  and one-third in Maine -- was elected after running "clean."

The cost of Clean Elections was modest. In Arizona, $1.9 million
was distributed to 59 candidates, a cost of less than $1 per state
resident, or one-twentieth of one percent of total state spending.
In Maine, the cost was just 69 cents per resident, or three one-hundredths
of one percent of total state spending.

Looking ahead, in Arizona, seven of the eight gubernatorial candidates
are running "clean"; in Maine four out of seven are.
And though the qualifying period for state legislative candidates
in both states doesn't close until this summer, observers expect
a solid majority will be running "clean" as well.

Republican Marc Spitzer, a newly elected member of the Arizona
Corporation Commission, summed up the law's benefits, saying,
"I am not a novice campaigner, having run for office successfully
four times under traditional private financing and in 2000 under
Arizona's Clean Elections law. The comparison is stark. Clean
Elections empowers the constituency, gives voices to thousands
of voters, expands opportunities and enhances democracy. Clean
Elections is about bringing back grass-roots, one-to-one politics,
the way it used to be, instead of high-dollar media campaigns
financed by huge contributions from the well-heeled. Clean Elections
is about the restoration of democracy."