Continuing Clean Elections in Arizona
Clean Elections in Arizona. Hi, David Donnelly and Micah Sifry from Public Campaign Action Fund here. We wanted to alert the DFA community to a massive fight this year to defend one of the few progressive policy advancements in the past couple of years.
In Arizona, a triumvirate of religious groups, corporate special interests and ambitious politicians have come together to repeal the 1998 voter-approved Clean Elections law -- a national model for campaign finance reform. Their method: a misleading constitutional amendment on this year's ballot. Here's the opposition in three nutshells:
Religious right. The head of the campaign is Nathan Sproul, the former executive director of the Arizona Christian Coalition and the state GOP. Read here for a column today all about Sproul and the connections to the radical, religious right.
Corporate special interests. Developers, banks, insurance companies and their lobbyists have already raised about $500,000 to repeal Clean Elections. The Arizona Republic called those funding the repeal effort a "who's who of industry."
Ambitious politicians. Two republican members of Arizona's congressional delegation, J.D. Hayworth and Jeff Flake, are rumored to be considering a run against Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano in 2006. They saw what happened in 2002. Napolitano participated in Clean Elections and ran on a level playing field against Republican Matt Salmon, even as Salmon brought in Bush to raise money. The GOP wants to repeal it to get a money advantage in 2006. [Blog for America]
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