Democratic primary winner Carl Sciortino and Mass Voters representative Alexandra Russell targeted election ills ranging from big spending to patronage in a panel last night.
Russell began by citing statistics on how elections are financed in Massachusetts. "One percent of the population is giving 83 percent of campaign contributions," she said. "A lot of people aren't able to afford to run."
Public financing of electoral campaigns arrived in Massachusetts in 1998 when Russell's organization helped pass the Clean Elections Bill. But the initiative was later overturned and "written off without any accountability," Russell said.
The bill aimed to provide a pool of money for candidates who could not afford to spend their own money to start a campaign. The average successful campaign for state representative costs $50,000, Russel said. "The higher the office, the more money it costs," she said
Though opponents of publicly-financed elections say taxpayer money should not be used to finance political campaigns, Russel said, she called elections "part of the public good" and said they should be "voter owned."
Sciortino also used the forum to bring up issues of fairness that pertained to his own election in the Democratic primary, such as the use of monies from organizations outside of the 34th Middlesex District.
"[Sciortino] had outside groups funding his campaign," said Vincent Ciampa, Sciortino's independent challenger in the Nov. 2 election.
Sciortino defended such financing as necessary since Massachusetts has no public money available to candidates. "I spent the last six months begging" for donations, he said, "going to people who are not in the district. That's not how democracy should work."
Ciampa had his own special-interest financing, Sciortino accused. "He pulled in over 30 special interest groups, I had six. I had 30 individual contributors from the district, he had zero," he said.
Sciortino said Ciampa's loss is as an example of the need for reinstatement of Clean Elections. "He thought he was safe," Sciortino said of the 16-year incumbent who often ran without Republican challengers.
"If you don't have a challenger, there's no accountability," he said.
