'Plainspoken and Honest'

NEA Today, May 2004 by Winans, Dave

Two states have funded campaign laws to reduce the influence of special interest money and promote electoral competition-by folks just like you.

Maine state Rep. Jackie Norton says she isn't some "professional politician" pursuing power or money. Nope, she's a 38-year high school math teacher who sacrifices part of her annual income to represent the citizens of her Bangor district, and whose highest ambition is-honest-to improve the lot of public school teachers and students.

"I'm very pro-public education," says Rep. Norton, who belongs to the House Education and Cultural Affairs Committee, "and I believe that happy, healthy teachers make for happy, healthy students."

And that's not all. This Maine Education Association (MEA) member answers only to her constituents, because her last campaign was publicly funded under Maine's "clean election" law. Passed in 1996, the law was designed to reduce the influence of special interest money in politics and to increase electoral competition.

Four states have passed clean election laws, but just two of them, Arizona and Maine, have fully funded them. In those states, clean election candidates for state office agree to forgo self-financing and private contributions, except for a token amount of "seed money." The hopefuls must then submit a set number of petition signatures and five-dollar checks from registered voters to qualify for public matching funds.

The jury is still out on the ultimate value of these laws, but politically active folks in the two clean election states report that this process is steadily yielding these results:

MORE TIME TO CAMPAIGN ON THE ISSUES. Arizona state Treasurer David Petersen, a conservative Republican who ran "clean" in his last election, told the U.S. Government Accounting Office: "In previous elections, I had to spend one-third to one-half of my time raising money. Clean elections made me become more of a grassroots candidate."

Maine Rep. Norton, a Democrat, agrees. "When I ran [as a privately funded candidate] for my first term," she recalls, "I spent as much time trying to raise money as meeting constituents, and I'm not in the habit of asking for money. This law freed me up to knock on doors and to ask constituents how they feel-to educate me to the issues."

MORE EDUCATION-FRIENDLY POLITICIANS. "Most of the candidates we supported in 2002 were clean and most won," points out Arizona Education Association (AEA) staffer Jim Lewis. "The House and Senate are better on public education, relatively speaking, than they were before."

Arizona's foremost "clean" incumbent is Gov. Janet Napolitano, who won a tight race two years ago with $3.2 million in public campaign funding. "She's a wonderful governor and a tremendous education advocate," says AEA President Penny Kotterman, "and she's proposing another progressive state budget this year."

Gov. Napolitano even joined 4,000 AEA members and other education stakeholders at a March 3 state Capitol rally to promote her budget-which advocates everything from all-day kindergarten to a boost in educator pay-and called on Congress to pay for the mandates of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the so-called No ChUd Left Behind law.

FEWER PRESSURES ON POLITICIANS. The Maine clean election law, which also limits special-interest political action committee (PAC) donations to $250 per candidate, has shielded Rep. Norton from some pretty compromising situations. "It would be horrible," she says, "to have special interests pay my way, to have to deal with them when it comes time to push the button to vote!"

FEWER ELECTORAL BARRIERS TO EDUCATORS. Because of Arizona's clean election law, "new and more people" are running for office, "including our members, whom we train how to run 'clean,'" reports AEA's Lewis. There are fewer new faces in the Maine legislature, adds MEA staffer Steve Grouse, but he predicts that will change over time and the result will be "good quality legislators, if not better, than what we have now."

More quality lawmakers, perhaps, like Jackie Norton-who thinks good educators make good political material. "They're good at dealing with people and they're fairly well-informed and patient in educating people," she says. And, yes, "They're plainspoken and honest."

-DAVE WINANS

FOR MORE on clean election laws, go to www.azclean.org.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) lobbyists and members helped persuade legislators to create the state's first new revenue stream to public education in 14 years. A new law taxes and regulates the state's thriving Native American gaming industry, and is expected to yield at least $70 million in new revenue in the first year alone.

Other hopeful news for recessionbattered OEA members: Gov. Brad Henry introduced a five-year plan to boost teacher pay to the regional average and fully pay teachers' individual health care premiums. "It's terrific to have someone with some vision for education in the governor's mansion," says OEA President Roy Bishop.

South Carolina