Whatever else happens on Election Day, this much is already clear:
in 48 out of 50 states, the skyrocketing cost of campaigns shows
no sign of slowing down. Governor’s races across the country
are setting fundraising records, with Gray Davis of California
hitting $60 million on his own and the New York race expected
to top $100 million. So far in this election cycle, the national
parties have raked in over $720 million in hard and soft money,
a clip that is fast outpacing the 2000 cycle. Congress does little
work on Mondays or Fridays and most evenings of the week, as most
Members have to devote precious hours to dialing donors for dollars.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. In two states, Arizona
and Maine, a majority of the candidates for state office are financing
their campaigns solely with public funds.

In Maine, 62% of all candidates (231 out of 372) on the fall
ballot are participating in that state’s Clean Elections
system, which offers candidates the option of receiving full public
financing in exchange for limiting their spending and rejecting
private donations. In Arizona, 53% of all the candidates (84 out
of 158) are running “clean.” These candidates include
two of the three major candidates for governor of Arizona and
70% of all the contenders running for statewide offices. These
participation rates are about twice the rate seen in both states
in 2000, the first time candidates had the option of seeking public
funding.

Observers predict that more than half the Maine House and as
much as three-quarters of its Senate, along with 6 of 9 of Arizona’s
statewide offices, will likely be held by candidates who ran “clean.”

Listen to these testimonials about the system in Arizona:

• "Two years ago the establishment pols said no way this
  is going to work," says Cecilia Martinez, executive director
  of the nonprofit Clean Elections Institute, a public-funding
  advocacy group. "But now we see that this November Arizona
  may very well elect the first publicly funded governor in the
  United States. And there's a chance we could elect publicly
  financed candidates for every statewide office."

• State Representative Meg Burton Cahill seems straight out
  of a Frank Capra script celebrating that idealized but rare
  species of politician known as the "citizen-legislator."
  Showing up at a press interview in blue jeans, sandals and a
  bright red Hawaiian shirt, the 48-year-old first-term Democrat
  boasts of being a politician who authentically represents her
  blue-collar friends, neighbors and constituents. A veteran neighborhood
  activist married to a bricklayer (who serves on the suburban
  Tempe, Arizona, City Council), Burton Cahill is a potter by
  profession. But thanks to Arizona's four-year-old "clean
  money" elections law, she was able to win her seat in 2000
  by narrowly defeating a powerful incumbent Republican without
  ever having to ask for a single traditional campaign contribution.
  Under the new law, all she had to do was gather 200 "seed"
  checks of $5 each and that qualified her for more than $25,000
  in public campaign funds. "I would never have been able
  to run without clean money," she says.

• "I have to admit that my initial participation [in clean
  elections] was strictly tactical," says self-described
  conservative Marc Spitzer, who holds a seat on Arizona's powerful
  Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities and other
  big businesses in the state. Sitting in his office next to a
  portrait of him shaking hands with George W. Bush, Spitzer says
  that he initially opposed the measure when it was put before
  voters in 1998. "I was convinced you would never be able
  to get big money out of politics," he says. But sensing
  that clean money might level the playing field and allow voters
  to focus on who is the better-qualified candidate rather than
  the better fundraiser, Spitzer reluctantly took the public-funding
  route. By the end of his successful campaign, the former state
  senator had become a true believer. "All of a sudden we
  had to get off our asses and go out and talk to real people,"
  he says. "And that's healthy."

• “…activists seem uniformly encouraged by clean
  elections, even if they also agree that change is going to be
  slow and gradual. For starters, it opens the doors wide to more
  progressive candidates who otherwise would not get funding.
  "This is bound to have a huge effect on policy," says
  Chad Campbell, program director of the Arizona Advocacy Network,
  a coalition of labor and environmental groups. "For years
  we had been working on the issue of sprawl in Phoenix and were
  getting nowhere," he says. "But now because of clean
  elections, we have all kinds of candidates no longer dependent
  on developer contributions talking openly about all of our issues."

• Republican Spitzer has his own eclectic take on how clean
  elections will affect the ideological balance. "The left
  perspective is that if we get big money out of politics we'll
  have a Marxist nirvana," he says. "That's bull----.
  But what you will have is a participatory democracy something
  like the Port Huron Statement instead of a small group of lobbyists
  determining policy."

Those excerpts are drawn from Marc Cooper’s article, “Running
Clean in Arizona,” from the October 14 issue of The Nation.