No on prop. 89
I must admit that prop. 89 is an enticing proposition. It’s an attempt to reign in campaign spending and it has a mechanism to do it that avoids the constitutional issues that most reforms do. It does this by using public funds to match the money raised by private campaign contributors. The idea is that there will be no benefit to raising your own money because every dollar you raise, your opponent will get as well. To double the effect, the publicly funded candidate won’t be answering any questions about being a toy of special interests. The result would be that every candidate would voluntarily sign up for this program and therefore all candidates would be publically funded at a much lower level than they currently collect.
At least that’s the theory.
The problem is that while it may work, California will potentially be footing a VERY large bill during the transition phase and potentially indefinitely if it never accomplishes its goal. That’s too much of a risk in our financially strapped state to take.