Money rules California elections because that’s the way politicians like it | Opinion

Campaign finance laws in California are a joke and have been for more than 20 years.

As far back as the 1999-2000 legislative session, former Senator John Burton authored a bill that became Proposition 34. The measure, which established campaign contribution limits, passed with 60% of the vote in November of 2000. Voters were clearly responding to the false promise that a “Yes” vote would “limit campaign spending,” “require faster disclosure of contributions via the internet” and “close loopholes for wealthy candidates.” These claims were all in the ballot argument in favor of the measure signed by Dan Stanford, former chair of the Fair Political Practices Commission.

Do those claims resemble reality today?

While the intent to limit campaign contribution in Prop. 34 was to keep the money directly out of their hands, candidates still benefit from ridiculous sums of money — even if it doesn’t flow directly into their coffers.

Former Sacramento City Councilmember Angelique Ashby could say with a straight face that she abided by her pledge to refuse oil money in her recent state senate race against Dave Jones. But oil, gas and utilities spent nearly $2 million in independent expenditures to help Ashby narrowly defeat Jones despite her oil pledge. It was comical.

What’s just as comical is the Cal-Access website, run by California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and intended as a tool for the public to track campaign spending. It is the technological equivalent of MySpace.

I was involved in a 2022 campaign where hundreds of thousands of dollars in independent expenditures were spent on behalf of my candidate. But the Cal-Access site is cumbersome to a point where the average person would struggle to learn about who was funding the independent expenditure for my candidate. The same instant disclosure desired in Prop. 34 for transparency is exactly how candidates find out who is supporting or opposing them and how much they are spending to do it. Meanwhile, efforts to fix Cal-Access have stalled.

“It was a system that was not going to work,” Weber said of Cal-Access in an interview with CalMatters. “And no one could tell me why, and no one could tell me when and no one could tell me what the problem was. So I had to hire an outside person to come in and give us information on the project.”

That admission gives me little hope that Cal-Access will be fixed in my lifetime. If only California was a state with some technology and database savvy!

Proponents claimed that Prop. 34 would close loopholes for wealthy candidates. But former gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and current Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis. refute that claim.

I could go on and on about how campaign finance reform in California is strictly performative and everyone knows it. A friend of mine even posted a picture of herself on Facebook dressed up as a campaign mailer for Halloween with mail pieces attached all over her. It’s just a game.

The path forward should be full disclosure of all campaign contributions without limits. Further, now that the office of the Secretary of State has failed to provide a platform for transparency for two decades, the burden for that immediate and full disclosure should probably be placed on the candidates themselves.

In short, Prop. 34 was a total failure.