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Small Donors, Big Democracy*

New York City’s Matching Funds as a Model for the Nation and States

By Michael J. Malbin and Peter W. Brusoe†

ABSTRACT: It has been argued that it would be fruitful for public policy to promote participation

in the campaign finance system by small donors, both to dilute the power of large donors and to

foster citizen engagement. One empirical question is whether it is plausible to imagine enough

small donors coming forward to have a major impact. There are very few examples of

jurisdictions with functioning policies whose specific purpose is to increase the role of small

donors. One is New York City’s public financing system, which in 2009 gave participating

candidates six dollars in matching funds for each of the first $175 that an individual city resident

gave to their campaigns. This paper considers the effects of this program, based on an original

analysis of millions of contribution records to candidates in all of the states, as well as New York

City. The evidence shows that a properly designed public matching fund system can increase not

only the number and proportional importance of small donors, but also the demographic

diversity of donors in the system. The article concludes with a general consideration of the goals

of public financing and an argument that matching fund programs serve several of those goals

better than alternative forms of public financing, such as full public funding.

The past few years have not been good for some of the old assumptions and premises

that underlay decades of campaign finance reform. In January 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court

decided (in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) that corporations have

the right to make unlimited independent expenditures expressly advocating the election or

* We wish to thank the Joyce Foundation, Open Society Institute, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Smith

Richardson Foundation for supporting the research in this paper. The paper’s title is derived from a panel

held at the City University of New York’s Baruch College School of Public Affairs, where some of these

thoughts were presented.

† Michael J. Malbin is Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany (SUNY) and Executive

Director of The Campaign Finance Institute, a nonpartisan research institute in Washington D.C. Peter W.

Brusoe is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at The American University.

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defeat of specific candidates. Non-party electioneering and independent spending in elections

for the U.S. Senate and House more than doubled between 2008 and 2010. 1 Some of the

biggest spenders were newly created entities, with uninformative names, backed by undisclosed

funding sources. This kind of spending almost surely will increase in 2012, both in national and

state elections.

The role of money in U.S. elections after Citizens United is only one part of what some

have described as a larger equality problem in campaign finance.2 The bulk of the money spent

on politics in the United States comes from a small number of people who can afford to give and

spend large amounts. This is not surprising. It takes money to give money. But the problem in

a democracy is that having the financial wherewithal produces unequal political power.

Campaign finance reformers in the past have tried to address this by putting limits on

contributions and spending. But the Supreme Court has cut off this approach. The Court has

upheld contribution limits only for the purpose of preventing corruption. It has rejected any

mandatory limits on spending at all, including independent spending by corporations.

Restrictions on speech simply will not be accepted in the name of equality, or even in

the name of a broad definition of “corruption”. But this fact does not rule out equality and

citizen participation as legitimate concerns of public policy. The requirement is to use policy

methods do not restrict or inhibit speech. It is both constitutional and perfectly appropriate to

promote participation and equality by building up instead of squeezing down – to dilute the

power of the few by increasing the number and importance of low-dollar donors and

volunteers. 3

The constitutional theory is straightforward. The empirical question is whether this is

just wishful thinking. Would an approach like this actually work? During the 2008 election,

some wishful thinkers saw technological innovation as enough by itself to accomplish this goal,



but that has not been borne out. The Internet lowers the cost of mobilizing small donors and

volunteers. But it is still easier for most candidates to raise money in large chunks, so they will

try to mobilize large donors first. Past students of participation have argued that one cannot

expect most people to give or participate unless they are asked. Mobilization is a necessary,

though not a sufficient, condition for their participation.4 So the question is whether public

policy can alter the incentives for candidates to mobilize donors who give smaller amounts.

There are very few examples of jurisdictions with functioning policies whose specific

purpose is to increase participation by small donors. One is the State of Minnesota, which until

2009 offered a rebate of up to $50 to donors contributing to political parties, or to candidates

who participate in the state’s partial public funding system. Another is the City of New York,

which in 2009 gave participating candidates six dollars in public matching funds for each of the

first $175 that an individual city resident gives to their campaigns. (The matching ratio was four-

for-one for the first $250 in 2001 and 2005.) The 2009 formula made a $175 donor as valuable

to participating candidates as a $1,225 donor was to non-participants.

This paper considers the effect of New York City’s program and concludes that matching

funds systems do appear to have a substantial effect on the behavior of potential donors and on

the mix of contributions received by candidates. Before we present results from the New York

City municipal elections of 2005 and 2009, however, it would be useful to prepare a context for

those results. The next section presents an analysis of the contributions to candidates in each of

the thirty-three states that held gubernatorial and legislative elections in 2006, the most recent

year for which we have completed such an analysis.

BASELINE: THE SOURCES OF STATE CAMPAIGN FUNDS

The following table shows the sources of 2005-2006 campaign contributions to all of the

major party, general-election candidates for Governor and state legislature in thirty-three



states. (Preliminary results for 2010 show a general consistency across the two election years.)

For each state, contributions were grouped by their sources — whether from individuals, parties

or non-party organizations. Individual contributions were analyzed further to determine the

total amount each donor gave to a candidate. The percentage in each cell represents the

percentage of candidates’ money that came in from donors whose contributions added up to

the amount indicated.

In technical terms, the unit of analysis presented for individuals is neither the

contribution, nor the donor, but the donor-to-candidate pair. One pair is made up of one

donor’s total contributions to one candidate in an election cycle. For the sake of clarity, we shall

refer to these throughout this article as “donor-to-candidate pairs”. We chose to present these

pairs rather than raw contributions (which is what most state and federal disclosure websites

report) because this is the most relevant number for public policy. Contribution limits restrict

the total amount a donor may give to a candidate. A limit per contribution would make no

sense if it allowed the donor to write an unlimited number of checks.

It would have been good if we could simply have taken the donor as the unit of analysis.

However, it is not possible to add up a donor’s total contributions across candidates in a state

that does not disclose the name and address of every donor. In most jurisdictions, disclosure is

required only for donors whose contributions cross some threshold amount – usually $100 or

less, but different from state to state. We can assume that all undisclosed money is below the

threshold amount for each donor per candidate, and make plausible assumptions from past

survey and other research about how many people it would take to give a specific sum of

undisclosed money to any one candidate. However, there is simply no way to know which

donors under that threshold have given to more than one candidate. As a result, the donor-to-

candidate pair is the most reliable unit for comparative analysis across jurisdictions.



To arrive at information about donor-to-candidate pairs involves the following steps.

We begin with the contribution records for all fifty states provided by the National Institute of

Money in State Politics. Contributions are identified as coming from the same donor by

matching the names in public contribution records (and indisputable variations of the name) as

well as considering their addresses. The amount each donor gives to each candidate is then

tabulated by adding all of his or her combined contributions to that candidate in an election

cycle. Under this method, a person who writes twenty checks of $50 to one candidate would be

counted as a $1,000 donor to that candidate.

Table 1 lists the thirty-three states in increasing order of the percentage of money that

came in 2005-2006 in donor-to-candidate pairs of $250 or less. The table does not include

candidate self-financing, support from a candidate's immediate family, or public funding (where

it exists). It also does not include independent spending by political parties or others.

[TABLE 1 GOES HERE]

As is shown in Table 1, candidates in the various states received anywhere from 4% to 60% of

their money from donor-to-candidate pairs of $250 or less. The median state was Tennessee

with 16 percent. In states with high percentages of candidate reliance on $250-or-less donor-to-

candidate pairs, public policy seems to be part of the explanation. Vermont (40%) had a $200

contribution limit for much of the 2006 cycle. When the Supreme Court struck the limit down in

Randall v. Sorrell,5 the state’s individual contribution limit reverted to $2,000 for the rest of the

cycle. This was still half of the national median for gubernatorial races and at the median for

legislative races. Nebraska (38 percent) permits unlimited contributions, but offers partial

public financing to candidates whose opponents exceed a spending limit. Finally, Minnesota (60

percent) had low contribution limits ($2,500 for Governor and $600 for legislature), partial

public financing, and (until mid-2009) up to a $50 rebate per year to individuals contributing to a



political party or to a candidate who participates in public financing (as do most candidates

there).

CULTURE OR POLICY?

NEW YORK CITY AS A CASE STUDY

The claim that public policy helps explains the relative importance of small donors

seems intuitive, but is open to an alternative explanation. The standout state in the small

donor-to-candidate pair ranking was Minnesota, which was twenty percentage points ahead of

the second place state. Minnesota’s contribution pattern seems to confirm the importance of

the state’s rebates and partial public financing, both of which were mentioned as being

important in candidate and donor surveys in which the current co-authors participated.6

Nevertheless, it would be premature to consider the case settled. In addition to having these

laws, Minnesota also has an unusually active civic culture with high levels of voluntarism and

voter turnout. Perhaps, therefore, the laws and contribution patterns both flow from a

common source in the civic culture, rather than the laws having an independent effect on

contributions.

New York City is a good test case for sorting out these explanations. The city has a

markedly different political and civic culture from Minnesota’s, with low rates of voter

participation. However, its matching fund system (like the rebate system in Minnesota) was

designed to give candidates an incentive to reach out to small donors. If smaller donors play a

greater-than-normal role in the city’s elections, it would be evidence in support of the claim that

the city’s policies played a hand in that result.

New York City’s partial public financing system was enacted by the City Council in

February 1988 and given a further boost that November when the voters strengthened the new



Campaign Finance Board by giving it protection in the city’s charter.7 In its early years, the city

provided a one-for-one matching amount of public funds for the first $1,000 contributed by a

city resident to a candidate. The one-for-one approach paralleled the system used in the

presidential primaries and followed by some states. By 2001, however, the city’s matching rate

was changed to a four-for-one match for the first $250. This allowed $250 donors to trigger the

same $1,000 in public funds as once was triggered only by $1,000 donors. The four-for-one

match stayed in place for the election of 2005 and then was changed to six-for-one for the first

$175 for the elections of 2009. One explicit reason offered for changing from a one-to-one

match to multiple-matching was to heighten the importance of small donors.

City Council Candidates in 2005 and 2009

This section of the article analyzes contributions to candidates running in the New York

City elections of 2005 and 2009. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s self-financed reelection

campaigns dominated the overall money picture in both years. To simplify the discussion,

therefore, the following table presents information about the candidates running for the 51-

member city council. Each member of the City Council represents a constituency of more than

160,000 people, which makes a council district larger than most of the country’s single-member

state legislative districts. As with any public financing system in the United States, candidates

have the option to participate or not. Table 2 compares New York City Council candidates who

participated in the public financing system to ones who did not. Table 2 also compares New

York City’s candidates to the candidates who ran in the state elections of 2006. Following this

discussion, Table 3 will compare low-dollar donor-to-candidate pairs in 2005 with those of 2009

to see whether changing the matching formula for 2009 had any noticeable impact.

[TABLE 2 GOES HERE]



The left hand column of Table 2 shows that New York City Council candidates who

participated in the public matching fund system raised 32 percent of their private funds in 2005

from 32,539 donor-to-candidate pairs of $250 or less. In 2009, the participating candidates

raised 37 percent of their funds in the same amounts from 50,933 donor-to-candidate pairs.

Our first comparison is not one year to another but between New York City and other

jurisdictions. In only four of the states in 2006 did the $250-or-less pairs provide more than 30

percent of the candidates’ funds. We do acknowledge the imprecision of comparing cities to

states, and of comparing either 2005 or 2009 to 2006. Nevertheless, we are struck by how well

New York City stacks up on a measure in which New York State shows up at the bottom of the

list. And when the value of matching funds is allocated to the donors who triggered them,

donor-to-candidate pairs of $250-or-less were responsible for 54 percent of the money raised by

participating City Council candidates in 2005 and 65 percent in 2009. No state other than

Minnesota comes close to either figure.

Before one rushes to a campaign finance law explanation, one must confront the

possibility that low-donor New Yorkers are simply more inclined to participate than most other

Americans. This is the same “political culture” issue we raised earlier with respect to

Minnesota. In response, we note that if we were looking at a phenomenon that would arise

spontaneously out of the population, we should see its effects for non-participating candidates

as well as for participants. But non-participating candidates in 2005 raised only 11 percent of

their money from $250-or-less donor-to-candidate pairs, and 17 percent in 2009. The 17

percent figure was about equal to the median state of 2006, while the 11 percent figure would

have been in the lowest quartile. In addition, when we think about the possibility of

spontaneous giving, we have to note that the candidates who ran for election to New York State

offices in 2006 raised only 7 percent of their funds statewide from donor-to-candidate pairs of



$250-or-less. When we compare the same population to itself, we see that only 4 percent of

the funds contributed by New York City residents to state candidates in 2006 came in amounts

of $250 or less. We conclude therefore that the city’s multiple-matching fund system seems to

have had a noticeable structuring effect on the incentives of candidates, donors, or both, and

that this structuring in turn has affected the mixture of money in city elections.

Testing Two Paths – Reshuffling versus Increased Participation

There are at least two different ways in which laws might affect the proportion of

money from low-dollar donors. One possibility is that donors with a lot of money decide to

spread it around to more candidates. If a donor gave $1,000 to one candidate in 2005, the

contribution would have had a value of $2,000 to the candidate ($1,000 in private funds plus

another $1,000 in matching funds). If the same donor gave $250 to each of four candidates, the

same $1,000 in private funds would generate $4,000 in matching funds. So there was an

incentive in 2005 for potentially large donors to spread their money around by giving each

candidate $250 or less. The alternative path is that matching funds give candidates an incentive

to look for new donors, while they also increase the new donors’ willingness to give. We see

evidence of both paths by comparing the results of 2005 with 2009.

In 2005, the city matched each of the donor’s first $250 on a four-for-one basis. In

2009, it matched each of the first $175, six for one. We should expect some strategic donors,

therefore, to have given exactly $250 per candidate in 2005, so they could spread their money

around. In 2009, similar considerations should lead the strategic donor to give exactly $175 and

then save the remaining $75 for another candidate or purpose. To test this theory, table 3

breaks down all of the donor-to-candidate pairs of $250 or less into ones that gave less than

$175, exactly $175, between $175 and $250, and exactly $250. Because New York City’s law

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requires disclosure for all contributions, we are able to present the actual number of donor-to-

candidate pairs in each of the table’s cells for individual contributions.

We retain the use of pairs so we can continue comparing New York City with other

jurisdictions. However, the city’s lack of a disclosure threshold also makes it possible to report

more information about those pairs in New York City than we can in many states. In the 2009

election, we counted 91,779 discrete individual donors. Of these, 81,742 individuals (89%) gave

to only one candidate, 6,760 (7%) gave to two candidates, and 1,766 (2%) gave to three. The

remaining 2 percent gave to four or more candidates, with 58 giving ten or more times. The

percentages in 2005 were almost the same, with 64,533 (88%) of that year’s 73,287 individual

donors giving to only one candidate. As a result, we are confident that the conclusions we draw

from our information about donor-to-candidate pairs in New York City will also apply directly to

most of the city’s donors.

[TABLE 3 GOES HERE]

In 2005, City Council candidates who participated in the public financing system raised

13 percent of their funds in amounts of exactly $250 from 4,935 donor-candidate pairs.

Nonparticipating candidates raised only 4 percent of their funds in amounts of exactly $250.

The higher percentage for participating candidates makes sense. The participating candidates

had an incentive to urge donors to get up to $250, and at least some of the donors who could

afford to give more had reason to stop there (or divide their money between themselves and

their spouses). Equally interesting is the fact that almost nobody (112 donor-to-candidate pairs)

gave exactly $175 in 2005. That should also not be a surprise. In 2005, that dollar amount was

essentially a random number (or a random multiple of 25).

In 2009, non-participating candidates once again received very little from donor-to-

candidate pairs of exactly $175, and they received just about the same percentage of their funds

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from donor-to-candidate pairs of exactly $250 as their counterparts in 2005. However,

participating City Council candidates saw a drop in their $250 donor-to-candidate pairs and an

increase in their $175 ones. Participating candidates raised 6 percent of their funds from 2,711

donor-to-candidate pairs of exactly-$250 donors (down from 4,935 such pairs in 2005, when

they were responsible for 13 percent of the candidates’ funds.) But these same candidates in

2009 received 5 percent of their funds from 3,129 donor-to-candidate pairs of exactly $175 (up

from 0.2 percent of their money from 112 donor-to-candidate pairs in 2005). This is very strong

evidence in support of the claim that people who were knowledgeable about the law – most

likely candidates – were educating potential donors and influencing their behavior.

Second Path – Increased Participation

But Table 3 also suggests that the second mechanism was also at work and that new

donors were being drawn into the system. Again looking only at the participating candidates for

City Council, the donor-to-candidate pairs of $1-$174 made up a large majority of the total

number of donor-to-candidate pairs in both 2005 and 2009 – 65 percent in 2005 and 73 percent

in 2009. These $1-$174 donor-to-candidate pairs were not likely to be made up of strategic

givers spreading their money around, and there was a big jump in this group’s number, as well

as its financial importance.

• In 2005, 11 percent of participating council candidates’ money came from 25,988 donor-

to-candidate pairs of $1-$174.

• But in 2009, participating candidates received 21 percent of their money from 42,733

donor-to-candidate pairs of $1-$174.

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Clearly, something was happening in addition to large donors reshuffling their contributions.

The 2009 election saw a 64 percent increase in the number of donor-to-candidate pairs. This

was a substantial increase in participation and not simply rearranging old money.

To compare New York City to other jurisdictions, we went back to the 33 states in Table

1 to measure the percentage of each state’s voting age population (VAP) that gave any money at

all in 2006 to any major party, general election candidate for governor or state legislature, using

consistent methods across jurisdictions for estimating the number of donors below each state’s

disclosure threshold. The results are displayed in Table 4. Once again, the intrinsic limitations

of the data make it necessary to present donor-to-candidate pairs rather than donors.

[TABLE 4 GOES HERE]

As the table shows, the top four states are ones in which the donor-to-candidate pairs

equaled from 4 percent to above 5 percent of the voting age population. The median states

(Oregon and Nebraska) showed 1.57 percent. New York State was at the very bottom of the list,

with 0.49 percent. In that same state election of 2006, only 0.22 percent of the city’s VAP gave

anything to a candidate for state office. But in New York City’s 2005 elections, the donor-to-

candidate pairs equaled 1.16 percent of the city’s VAP and in 2009, that figure went up to 1.75

percent of the city’s VAP.

Neither of these numbers for city participation broke any national records. A rate of

1.75 percent would fit comfortably within the top half of the states, but not near the top.

However, this was from a donor pool that was at the bottom of the national ranking for state

elections. Despite the fact that one of the two major party candidates for mayor was self-

financed, at least five times as many of the city’s residents seem to have given to city candidates

in 2005 as gave to state candidates in 2006. In 2009, the rate of donor participation in the city

election was more than eight times the contributing rate for city residents in the 2006 state

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election. A fair amount of this difference between city and state results can be explained, of

course, by the fact that city residents are more interested in city than state politics. But an

interest in city politics cannot explain away the disparity in Table 2 between city candidates who

accepted public funding and ones who did not.

We would not be comfortable claiming from the evidence we have that the change in

the law between 2005 and 2009 fully explains the increase in participation rates across those

two elections. Nevertheless, we take note of the fact that the increased donor participation in

2009 was occurring during an election in which the city’s voter turnout declined to a record low

26 percent, down from 33 percent in 2005.8 Typically, the number of small donors will go up

with the level of excitement about an election. In this situation, the number of donor-to-

candidate pairs went up during an election when turnout went down. This is another indication

that the law was independently effective in helping to structure the incentives for candidates

and donors. And whatever the difference between 2005 and 2009, it is clear that the law in both

years stimulated participating candidates to bring proportionally more small donors into the

system than their non-participating counterparts did.

More of the Same, or More and Different?

We next ask whether one should care whether more small donors participate. Let us

consider two possibilities. The first is that matching funds bring in more donors, but the donors

are essentially the same kinds of people as always have given to election campaigns – people of

well above average wealth and education, mostly white, with life experiences not all that

different from the major donors (except maybe with fewer lobbyists among them). The second

possibility is that matching funds give candidates an incentive to look for new and different kinds

of people to become active in politics as donors, as well as giving potential donors an incentive

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to give. One can make policy arguments in favor of both of these objectives, but they are

different.

If matching funds mostly affect the upper-middle-class and wealthy, the argument for

increasing the number of small donors would relate mostly to the dilution rationale. Having

more small donors in the system will reduce candidates’ dependence on the narrow circle of

people on whom they depend now. This, in itself, would not be trivial. Some major donors act

out of concerns about big policy issues or ideology – especially in highly visible national races for

the presidency. But in state and city politics, and often in congressional politics, the donors who

give $1,000 or more have particular concerns about issues that will affect their own economic

interests.9 Moreover, surveys in which we have participated have shown that the major donors

in state elections are far more likely than small donors to work after the election to lobby

elected officials to further their particularistic interests.10 Creating alternative pools of small

donors for candidates therefore will make office holders less dependent upon lobbyists and

other major givers who come to them with special pleading in mind. This will be true even if the

new donors have personal backgrounds not all that different from the old ones.

But let us now suppose the new donors bring a different set of experiences and political

interests to the table. For this to have happened, the candidate raising the money will have to

make a point of reaching out to new people. That candidate will have to be spending time with

a more diverse set of constituents than he or she would if all of his or her fundraising engaged

the upper middle class and rich. Alternatively, the availability of new contributor constituencies

may create opportunities for new candidates to run. Either way, the results should show up by

examining the donors.

We were not able to survey the donors directly for this article. However, we were able

to look at the neighborhoods in which the donors lived. We placed the residence of each donor

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to New York City’s 2009 candidates whose address was listed in the disclosure records within his

or her census block group. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, a block group “will

generally contain between 600 and 3,000 people … with an optimal size of 1,500.”11 New York

City’s five boroughs have a total of 5,733 census block groups. The following table describes the

block groups in which New York’s small, medium and large donors reside. The table uses data

from the 2000 census (provided by GeoLytics, Inc.12), but the results are strong enough as to be

unlikely to change much when 2010 census data become available.

[TABLE 5 GOES HERE]

Of the city’s 5,733 census block groups, only 809 (14 percent) had one or more donor-

to-candidate pairs of $1,000 or more. Mid-range donor-to-candidate pairs ($251-$999) lived in

1,651 (29 percent) of the census block groups. Donor-to-candidate pairs of $250 or less lived in

5,267 (92 percent) of the city’s block groups. In fact, 5,128 block groups (89 percent) were

home to at least one donor-to-candidate pair of $100 or less. These block groups were not at all

random in their variation. The census blocks with low-dollar donor-to-candidate pairs had lower

median incomes than the block groups with mid-range pairs, and the ones with mid-range pairs

had lower incomes than the ones with $1,000-or-more pairs. The low-donor block groups also

had higher levels of poverty, higher percentages of non-whites, higher percentages of adult

residents who did not complete high school, and lower percentages of adult residents with a

bachelor’s degree or above. And on every one of these measures, the block groups with mid-

range donor-to-candidate pairs fell between the block groups with low-dollar pairs and the ones

with high-dollar pairs. There can be little doubt that bringing more small donors into the system

in New York City has contributed to a greater diversity of neighborhood life experience in the

donor pool. Increasing the number of small donors therefore has been more than a means to

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dilute the power of the major givers. It has also led candidates to reach out to and engage a

more diverse and more representative set of constituents.

WOULD NEW YORK CITY’S RESULTS TRANSFER?

The impact of New York City’s matching funds on participation by small donors is

impressive. But would these policies be likely to produce similar results if adopted elsewhere?

The answer is yes. The Campaign Finance Institute has produced a series of hypothetical policy

scenarios for all fifty states, using simpler policies than New York’s but keeping the essence of a

multiple matching fund system aimed at small donors. These scenarios are available on the

Institute’s website.13 To produce the scenarios, the Institute identified donor-to-candidate pairs

in each of the states where disclosure records made the pairs possible. From these, it produced

“status quo” charts for 2006 based on numbers similar to the ones in Table 1 above, as well as

another set for the elections of 2008. It then imagined a series of policy options, based on

mixing and matching any of the following changes in policy:

(1) Lower contribution limits (two different sets of limits were offered);

(2) Instituting a three-for-one or five-for-one multiple matching grant system for the

first $50 each donor gives to a candidate, and then assuming (unrealistically) that

only the same donors gave the same amounts as they did under the status quo; and

(3) Assuming that either the matching fund or some other contextual force were to

bring enough new $50 donors into the system to add about two percentage points

to the state’s donor participation rate.

What follows broadly describes what would happen in most states under these

assumptions. First, reducing the contribution limit would have only a modest effect on the

proportional role of small donors. Even this modest effect was based on the assumption that

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the amount that donors contributed above the assumed limit in 2006 or 2008 would be retained

by the contributor, when we know there is every possibility that major donors will redirect their

political money. Of course, the fact that lowering the contribution limit might not have a strong

effect on small donors is not an argument against contribution limits. There are other good and

sufficient reasons that relate to the potential for corruption or undue influence. If a

contribution limit gives large donors a reason to distribute their contributions to more

candidates, this probably serves the anti-corruption rationale. Contribution limits may also have

an indirect effect on small donor participation by helping to reassure potential small donors that

their gifts will be meaningful, but the direct effect on small donors would not be great.

Introducing a simple five-for-one match for each of the first $50 would have a more

direct and predictable effect. Under the assumption of a static donor pool, this would make

each contribution of $50 (or less) worth six times its current value. It would also add $250 to

the value of larger contributions. Since the proportional impact of the $250 match decreases as

the size of a contribution goes up, the proportional importance of small donors would increase.

If we allocate matching funds to the donors responsible for them, and if we also assume a static

donor pool (which we know to be unrealistic), then the matching funds would increase the role

of small donors in low-participation states (such as New York and Illinois) from the low single

digits into the teens. In states with middling rates of participation, the effect would be roughly

to double or triple the importance of small donors, bringing their contributions to between a

quarter and a third of the candidates’ total funds – even with no new donors in the system.

But the biggest impact would come if a five-for-one matching fund did in fact produce

new donors. This is what we believe has happened in New York City. (In addition to the

statistical information provided above, anecdotal support for this belief can be found in recent

interviews of New York City candidates conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice.14

) For the

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sake of analysis, let us assume that enough new donors come into the system to increase the

participation rate by about two percentage points of the state’s VAP. Let us also assume that

each of the new donors gives exactly $50. That would bring the value of small donors up to

about the 60 percent mark in most states, which is roughly the same as it is now in Minnesota

and New York City. It would be well above the current second-place state. Of course, this two-

percent assumption about new participation may be overly optimistic, just as assuming no new

donors would be overly pessimistic. The most likely result would fall somewhere between the

two. Even such a mid-level result, however, would put the proportional role of small donors in

our hypothetical state at or above that of Vermont, which is currently in second place.

POLICY DISCUSSION AND SPECULATION:

PUBLIC FINANCING CHOICES UNDER CURRENT CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

We conclude the following from the analysis so far. First, New York City’s multiple

matching fund system is at least partly responsible for the extent to which participating

candidates rely on small donors financially. In addition, the matching funds have increased the

incentive for candidates to recruit small donors, increased the number of donors, and increased

the diversity of the census block groups in which the donors reside. Finally, we conclude that

other jurisdictions can achieve many of the same results by adopting similar policies.

This does not fully address all of the key policy questions, however, since there are

objections to public financing as matters of principle as well as prudence. This final section of

the article introduces some of these larger policy issues in two segments. The first presents a

brief overview of reasons offered by supporters of public financing, with comments. The second

compares forms of public financing against the goals being analyzed here.

7/14/2011 Page 19 DRAFT


Public Financing in General

Arguments in favor of public financing programs typically rest on two kinds of

foundations. For the sake of simplicity, we refer to them as positive and negative. Negative

justifications emphasize what a policy is trying to prevent; positive ones emphasize what the

policy is supposed to accomplish. Because most public financing programs have been coupled

with various kinds of restrictions and limits (in addition to contribution limits, which rest on their

own justification), the legal arguments in their behalf have tended to emphasize negative goals,

such as reducing corruption or the appearance of corruption by replacing private money from

large donors with public funds.

Whatever one may have thought ten years ago about such negative justifications, they

have become deeply implausible under contemporary constitutional law and political practice.

Under Buckley v. Valeo (1976) it is alright to ask candidates to restrict their own spending

voluntarily in return for partial or full public funding, but not to restrict independent spending or

spending by non-participating candidates. Independent spending has always raised problematic

questions for spending limits, but these have been brought to a head by recent court decisions.

As noted earlier, the Supreme Court’s January 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC held that it

is unconstitutional to treat unlimited independent spending by corporations differently from

independent spending by individuals. Both should be constitutionally protected, the Court said.

Two months later the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that in light of

Citizens United, it is not permissible to limit contributions to a committee that only makes

independent expenditures.15 Finally (or finally, as of this writing) the Federal Election

Commission issued an Advisory Opinion on June 30, 2011 in which it said that a federal

candidate or officeholder can be the featured guest speaker at independent expenditure

7/14/2011 Page 20 DRAFT


committee’s event during which the committee makes a pitch for unlimited contributions. The

only restriction is that the officeholder/candidate may not personally ask the donors to give

more than $5,000.16 With this $5,000 fig leaf, it seems as if it may now be legal for a candidate

— such as the well-known presidential candidate whose former finance director recently

formed an independent spending committee – to give a speech praising the independent

expenditure PAC and then sit down, or leave the event, so the former finance director can ask

for unlimited contributions to help the committee buy independent ads, presumably to help the

featured speaker. With this kind of political finance system, it is hard to see how to justify public

financing in terms of holding down spending, substituting public money for private, or the other

underpinnings that typically support the negative justifications for spending public money.

The positive goals are a different matter. They are both constitutionally acceptable and

plausible. Political scientists typically write about three: fostering competition, enabling a

broader and more diverse range of candidates to run for office, and promoting citizen

participation. If a policy restricted speech, then the positive effects would have to be presented

under constitutional law as side benefits to primary goals that relate to corruption. But if a

policy is based on positive incentives rather than restrictions, then it should alright for

competition, candidate recruitment or citizen participation to be the primary goal.

We focused on participation in this article. Some of the goals that relate to participation

look toward citizens; others look toward candidates and officeholders. For citizens, the

objectives are both to engage a larger number and to engage a more representative set. For

candidates and officeholders, the objective is to encourage greater and more direct engagement

with a broader range of constituents. With respect to citizens: we have already argued that

involving more people in the process as small donors can dilute the importance of large donors.

This is the easiest small-donor democracy goal to describe. However, it is also essentially a

7/14/2011 Page 21 DRAFT


negative one. It sees having more small donors not as being good for its own sake but as a

preventive cure.

On a more positive note, one might simply assert that more participation in a

democracy is good. However, there is some question about the extent to which making a

monetary contribution is associated with other forms of civic or political engagement. Sidney

Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman and Henry Brady found in their 1989-90 surveys that the act of

contributing (“checkbook participation”) typically was not associated with other, more

meaningful forms of political engagement. In fact, they found that more than two-thirds of

their respondents limited their involvement to contributing money (69 percent of their sample),

compared to only 12 percent who gave only time and 19 percent who give both time and

money. Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone expressed a similar concern in 2000 about whether

contributing to a political cause or interest group was a shallow form of participation.17 We

cannot respond to this issue fully in this article. An earlier report one of us co-authored about

small donors in the 2004 election indicated that small donors were also quite active in face-to-

face political activities.18 They appear not to have been merely checkbook participants.

However, we are not yet able to draw conclusions about sequencing – whether contributing

drew people to become more active than they otherwise would be. The Campaign Finance

Institute conducted a major survey of presidential donors in 2008. This survey included

questions that asked whether giving preceded a donor's engagement in nonfinancial forms of

campaign activism. The results are still being analyzed, but there is reason to believe that at

least some volunteers began their campaign activism with a donation. In earlier research, we

found, anecdotally, that some interest groups and the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign recruited

donors to volunteer.19 If the purported connection holds up under scrutiny, it would mean that

encouraging participation by small donors might help to encourage volunteering and therefore

7/14/2011 Page 22 DRAFT


help build up the stock of social and political capital. This is particularly important if

encouraging small donors brings a more diverse set of participants into the system who come

from neighborhoods not typically represented in the traditional class of large donors. This is

exactly what we found in New York City.

With respect to the second set of positive goals – altering the incentives for politicians

to engage more directly with citizens – we would make two points. First, any successful

program must attract political figures to participate in the system voluntarily. Second, we would

expect that a system using direct incentives would be more likely to produce the desired

engagement than a system which simply frees up the politician’s time from fundraising and then

passively hopes for the same result. We therefore look next at some of the major varieties of

public financing systems currently in use in the United States.

Flat Grants or Matching Funds?

From 1974 until the 1990s, public financing systems tended to follow the presidential

example: candidates for executive offices were typically offered full public funding for the

general election while primary candidates were offered one-for-one matching funds. In the

1990s, advocates began applying the presidential full-public-funding model for the general

election to state legislative elections in both primaries and general elections. Often called

“Clean Election” systems, these were adopted by an initiative process in Maine (1996) and

Arizona (1998) and by legislative action in Connecticut (2005). Under these systems,

participating candidates raise small contributions to qualify for a flat grant and are allowed to

spend only up to the amount of the grant once they qualify.

The sponsors of the new systems were well aware, however, of a significant design

problem with existing spending limits. Gubernatorial candidates in several states, as well as

7/14/2011 Page 23 DRAFT


more recent presidential candidates, have refused to participate if they perceive a program’s

spending limits as being too low and too rigid to let them contend with opponents who opt out

and who, therefore, can spend whatever they can raise. One way to address this problem

might be to increase the spending limit enough to cope with any foreseeable opponents. But

with a full-financing flat grant, increasing the spending limit also increases the public cost. This

extra cost might be acceptable in a gubernatorial or presidential general election with only two

or three major candidates. It could become prohibitively expensive to give every primary

candidate for every legislative seat the same amount of money as a candidate would need in the

few most competitive contests. To contend with the financial issue, the newer Clean Election

systems (and New York City’s multiple-matching system) gave a basic amount of funding to all

participating candidates, but then incorporated the idea that that high spending by a non-

participating opponent would trigger additional public funds above the base. (These took the

form of extra grants in the Clean Election states and extra matching funds in New York City.) In

some jurisdictions, the extra funds were also made available if the participating candidate

became a target of independent spending. The “triggers” seemed to help candidates decide to

participate in public financing systems, but that approach ran up against an insuperable barrier

on June 27, 2011, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared them to be unconstitutional.20

In theory, states could respond to the Supreme Court’s decision by giving all

participating candidates more money. But even if the taxpayers are willing to pay the bill, this

would only respond to the constitutional problem with triggers and not with other problems

intrinsic to flat grants. One relates directly to the goal of encouraging participation. Because

the amount of the flat grant and spending limit are identical in full public funding systems, the

systems do away with (or strongly weaken) the possibility of using small-donor fundraising as a

lever for bringing new donors into the process. A recent paper we co-authored with Wesley Y.

7/14/2011 Page 24 DRAFT


Joe, Clyde Wilcox and Henrik Schatzinger found that publicly funded candidates in the state of

Connecticut were raising money from enough donors to qualify for the grant and then stopping.

It is true that many Connecticut legislative candidates had more donors in 2008 than in the

privately funded election of 2006. Nevertheless, the dynamic of the law (which only allows

private fundraising for qualifying) means that fundraising was capped before the election season

was under way. As a result, most candidates raised their qualifying funds by staying within their

old circles of friends and supporters. The contributions did not bring many new people into the

system, and failed to produce more economic and racial diversity among donor-participants,

which was said to be one of the goals.21

In light of both the desire to encourage more participation by small donors, and the

constitutional problem with triggers (which had been anticipated since the Court had

overturned differential contribution limits in the so-called “millionaire’s” provision in the federal

Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act22), several major organizations that once advocated full public

financing began shifting their position toward supporting a “hybrid” system in which flat grants

would be a “floor” rather than a “ceiling.” For example, in versions of the federal “Fair Elections

Now Act” introduced in 2011, participating candidates for the U.S. Senate and House would be

able to raise private funds after the flat grant. Contributions would be subject to a low

contribution limit (such as $100) and would be available for multiple matching. Once a

candidate had received a predetermined maximum amount of public money, the matching

funds would stop, but the candidate could continue to raise private money under the same low

contribution limit.23 Some major reform organizations that once backed full public financing are

now supporting this federal bill, including Public Campaign and Common Cause. They were also

working with legislators in Connecticut on a similar system as a possible replacement for

triggers.24 The entire problem that had led to triggers would be avoided by not having a

7/14/2011 Page 25 DRAFT


spending limit. What is the problem with spending, these advocates argue, if all of the money

comes from small contributions?

The proposed hybrid system responds to two of the problems with full public funding,

but not with a third. Because the initial lump-sum payment to candidates are typically large, flat

grant systems tend to set high qualifying thresholds for receiving public funds. One of the

stated advantages of full public funding is that it can provide candidates, including challengers,

with enough money to run a competitive race. However, supporters (and legislators, and

taxpayers) are not interested in giving what could be a substantial sum to every minor candidate

who decides to run. To prevent a drain on the public purse, the systems all require candidates

to cross a significant threshold to qualify for a grant. Where to put the threshold is a sensitive

question. If the threshold is set too low, public money will be wasted. If too high, the threshold

will effectively become a barrier, defeating the goal of bringing new and potentially viable

candidates into the system.

We do not see a way out of this dilemma with flat grants. The qualifying test for a grant

will either be made too easy or too hard. It will either keep some potentially worthy people out

(which we consider the more serious problem) or it will let too many frivolous candidates in. It

is almost impossible to calibrate a qualification threshold that would be “just right” and stay that

way. In contrast, a system based completely on matching funds does not present the same

dilemma. To avoid setting the barrier too high, and keeping deserving candidates out, the

qualification threshold can be set fairly low. Candidates may then prove themselves as the

campaign season wears on. Candidates who do not develop significant constituencies are not

likely to get enough in matching funds to raise a fiscal concern anyway.

For all of these reasons, we see New York City’s multiple matching fund system as a

model for jurisdictions nationally. We suggest, however, that the New York model be modified

7/14/2011 Page 26 DRAFT


to resolve the intertwined problems of spending limits, thresholds and triggers. If the city does

not do so on its own, it may be forced to do so by the courts.25 With that important caveat, the

evidence from New York City in this article suggests that multiple-matching funds can stimulate

participation by small donors in a manner that is healthy for democracy.

There will be objection to this conclusion, of course, by those who simply believe it

inappropriate to spend public funds in this manner. This is not the place for an extended

consideration of the issue. We would argue, however, that extending political and civic

participation are public goods, benefiting the civil society as a whole. To those who are

concerned about the justice of “forcing” a taxpayer to support political speech he or she abhors,

we disagree because we do not see the issue any differently from otherwise neutral and

permissible school voucher funds making their way into religious schools, or a host of other

public programs that receive less than unanimous support from the taxpayers. If anything, this

concern about forcing taxpayers is another reason to prefer matching funds: no public money

would go to any candidate unless it is matching a specific contribution from an identifiable

individual. Everyone is free to disagree with a previous donor. Just give a small amount and

then watch that gift get multiplied too. The more who give, the better it is. Elections are, after

all, the public’s business.

7/14/2011 Page 27 DRAFT


Table 1. Percentage of Funds Received by Candidates, by Category of Donor

(Gubernatorial and Legislative Candidates in 33 States with Gubernatorial Elections in 2006)

Percentage From Individuals

Whose Contributions to the

Candidate Aggregated to …

Percentage from

Organizations Totals

State $1-$250

$251-

$999

$1,000 or

more

Non-Party

Orgs. Party

Per-

cent Dollars

AL 4% 4% 17% 73% 2% 100% $70,206,321

CA 5% 3% 47% 34% 11% 100% $230,821,374

OR 5% 1% 47% 41% 6% 100% $39,418,135

NY 7% 5% 33% 45% 10% 100% $87,811,035

NV 9% 4% 14% 63% 10% 100% $30,482,171

FL 10% 28% 5% 37% 20% 100% $75,064,156

WY 11% 9% 29% 48% 3% 100% $3,193,107

OH 11% 7% 37% 19% 27% 100% $68,795,128

IL 11% 3% 10% 61% 15% 100% $87,622,060

IA 12% 7% 37% 28% 16% 100% $30,447,171

NM 12% 6% 38% 11% 32% 100% $18,028,816

SC 13% 7% 39% 36% 4% 100% $17,779,583

GA 13% 6% 38% 38% 4% 100% $45,703,869

MI 13% 9% 45% 22% 10% 100% $56,547,344

PA 14% 7% 43% 25% 10% 100% $79,698,776

AR 15% 13% 39% 29% 4% 100% $18,024,307

TN 16% 11% 37% 29% 8% 100% $18,455,210

MD 17% 12% 35% 35% 1% 100% $46,439,970

ID 17% 9% 25% 43% 6% 100% $6,477,352

KS 17% 8% 28% 46% 1% 100% $10,872,285

OK 18% 11% 49% 0% 22% 100% $19,079,657

RI 20% 24% 36% 18% 3% 100% $5,888,571

CT 21% 19% 41% 14% 5% 100% $16,120,357

AK 21% 19% 28% 21% 11% 100% $11,607,931

HI 22% 9% 40% 26% 3% 100% $8,548,758

NH 22% 11% 37% 25% 4% 100% $4,475,429

MA 27% 32% 34% 4% 3% 100% $62,937,571

CO 28% 21% 25% 19% 7% 100% $14,324,767

SD 29% 2% 32% 19% 18% 100% $5,154,670

WI 36% 14% 39% 7% 3% 100% $23,371,146

NE 38% 8% 28% 25% 2% 100% $8,487,080

VT 40% 14% 17% 19% 10% 100% $3,052,483

MN 60% 11% 17% 6% 6% 100% $16,793,445

NB: Totals exclude public financing (where it exists) and candidate self-financing. The table also excludes two states

with full public funding systems (AZ, ME) and one whose disclosure records do not permit comparable analysis (TX).

SOURCE: Campaign Finance Institute, based on data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

7/14/2011 Page 28 DRAFT


Table 2. Percentage of Funds Received by NYC Council Candidates in

the Elections of 2005 and 2009, by Category of Donor

Percentage From Individuals

Whose Contributions to the


Percentage from

Organizations

Total*

$1-$250 $251-

$999

$1000 or

more

Non-Party

Orgs

Political

Parties

2005 NYC COUNCIL CANDIDATES

Non-participating (N=15) 11% 12%% 51% 25% 1% 100% Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 1,726 414 459 440 9 3,048

Participating (N=136) (Private funds only) 32% 16% 30% 19% 2% 100% Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 32,539 3,180 1,735 2,204 223 39,881

Participating (Private + public matching

funds allocated to responsible donors)

54% 16% 19% 10% 1% 100%

2009 NYC COUNCIL CANDIDATES

Non-participating (N=22) 17% 16% 64% 3% 0% 100% Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 2,633 535 536 53 3 3,760

Participating (N=234) (Private funds only) 37% 16% 31% 15% 1% 100% Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 50,933 3,602 1,845 1,753 139 58,272

Participating (Private + public matching

funds allocated to responsible donors)

65% 16% 15% 6% 0% 100%

SELECTED STATES, 2006

Minnesota 60% 11% 17% 6% 6% 100% Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 150,328 9,445 2,163 3,080 1,187 166,203

Median State (Tennessee) 16% 11% 37% 29% 8% 100% Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 28,747 7,305 3,889 5,518 807 46,266

NY State Elections – all donors 7% 5% 33% 45% 10% 100% Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 69,833 11,529 10,767 37,696 851 130,676

NY State Elections – NYC donors 4% 4% 36% 52% 4% 100% Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 23,652 3,169 3,643 NA NA NA

NB: Excludes Self-Financing. *Cells across may not add to 100% because of rounding.

SOURCE: The Campaign Finance Institute, derived from data supplied by the New York City Campaign

Finance Board and National Institute of Money in State Politics.

7/14/2011 Page 29 DRAFT


Table 3. Breakdown of NYC Candidates’ Aggregate Individual Contributions of $250 or Less in

the 2005 and 2009 Elections, as Percentages of Candidates’ Private Contributions

Percentage From Individuals Whose Contributions to the


$1-$174 $175 $176-$249 $250

$1-$250

Subtotal*

2005

Candidates who Participated in the Public

Matching Fund System

Mayor (N=6) 3% 0% 1% 7% 11%

Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 8,117 43 722 4,080 12,962

Public Advocate (N= 6) 10% 0.1% 2% 14% 26%


Comptroller (N=2) 0.3% 0% 0.2% 2% 3%

Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 237 0 58 539 834

Borough President (N= 18) 8% 0.1% 2% 8% 19%


City Council (N=136) 15% 0.2% 3% 13% 32%

Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 25,988 112 1,494 4,945 32,539

Non-Participating Candidates

Mayor (N=2) † † † † †

Public Advocate (N=0) † † † † †

Comptroller (N=1) 8% 0.1% 2% 5% 15%

Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 400 1 29 73 503

Borough President (N=1) † † † † †

City Council (N=15) 5% 0.1% 1% 4% 11%

Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 1,308 6 119 293 1,726

2009

Candidates who Participated in the Public

Matching Fund System

Mayor (N= 5) 6% 8% 1% 2% 12%


Public Advocate (N=6 ) 7% 6% 2% 4% 18%

Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 6,476 1,741 481 784 9,482

Comptroller (N=6) 3% 2% 1% 2% 8%

Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 3,875 1,216 783 744 6,618

Borough President (N=11) 16% 10% 5% 8% 40%


City Council (N= 234) 21 5 5 6 37

Number of donor-to-candidate pairs 42,733 3,129 2,360 2,711 50,933

Non-Participating Candidates

Mayor (N=5) † † † † †

Public Advocate (N=0) † † † † †

Comptroller (N= 3) † † † † †

Borough President (N= 1) † † † † †

City Council (N=22) 8 1 5 4 17


NB: Excludes Self-Financing

*Subtotals across may not add because of rounding. †Amounts in these cells are too small to be meaningful.

SOURCE: The Campaign Finance Institute, derived from data supplied by the New York City Campaign

Finance Board.

7/14/2011 Page 30 DRAFT


Table 4. Percentage of Voting Age Population Contributing to

Gubernatorial or State Legislative Candidates in 2006 and to

NYC Elections in 2005 and 2009

State/City % of VAP

Contributing

State/City % of VAP

Contributing

RI 5.44% (continued)

NM 4.73% OK 1.39%

VT 4.66% KS 1.28%

MN 4.11% ID 1.26%

AK 3.66% MI 1.24%

SD 3.55% PA 1.23%

MA 3.17% NH 1.22%

HI 3.00% GA 1.19%

CT 2.88% NYC 2005* 1.16%

NV 2.77% IL 1.00%

IA 2.37% SC 0.98%

WI 2.28% OH 0.92%

MD 2.21% AL 0.79%

WY 2.09% FL 0.78%

NYC 2009* 1.75% TN 0.67%

AR 1.62% CA 0.56%

OR 1.57% NY State 0.49%

NE 1.57% NYC residents in NY

state election* 0.22%

CO 1.41%

NOTES: (1) The number of contributors below each state's disclosure threshold is estimated from the state's

particular threshold and is based on what is known about the size of small contributions from surveys and other

states' data. (2) The three lines marked with an asterisk use New York City’s voting age population as the

denominator. (3) The numerator for each cell is the number of donor-to-candidate pairs. This number will be slightly

higher than the number of donors, which is not possible to determine with precision. We are assuming the

discrepancy rate to be more or less consistent across jurisdictions. This is likely, since the vast majority of donors

seem to give to only one candidate.

SOURCE: Campaign Finance Institute, based on data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics and the

New York City Campaign Finance Board.

7/14/2011 Page 31 DRAFT


Table 5. Characteristics of New York City Census Block Groups with 2009 Donors

Block Groups with Donors Whose Contributions to a Candidate Aggregated To …

Characteristics of the block groups $1-250 $251-$999 $1000 or more

Number of block groups with donors giving these amounts 5,267 1,651 809

Percentage of city’s block groups with donors giving these amounts 92% 29% 14%

Average aggregate contribution of the donors $76 $453 $1,729

Median household income in block groups with donors $45,115 $58,218 $70,346

Percentage living in poverty 19% 13% 11%

Percentage of the population who are non-white 52% 32% 25%

Percentage over age 25 who did not complete high school 25% 18% 14%

Percentage over age 25 with Bachelor’s degree or beyond 31% 43% 52%

SOURCE: Campaign Finance Institute, based on data from the New York City Campaign Finance

Board and U.S. Bureau of the Census data provided by GeoLytics, Inc.

7/14/2011 Page 32 DRAFT


ENDNOTES

1 Campaign Finance Institute, “Non-Party Spending Doubled in 2010”, Press Release, November 5, 2010. Available at

http://www.cfinst.org/Press/PReleases/10-11-05/Non-Party_Spending_Doubled_But_Did_Not_Dictate_Results.aspx.

2 Daniel P. Tokaji, “The Obliteration of Equality in American Campaign Finance Law (And Why the Canadian Approach

is Superior)”. Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper Series, No. 140. Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy

Studies, Moritz College of law, Ohio State University, January 24, 2011. Available from the Social Science Research

Network Electronic Paper Collection, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1746868.

3 This point has been argued previously by one of the co-authors in Michael J. Malbin, “Rethinking the Campaign

Finance Agenda,” in The Forum. Vol. 6, No. 1 (2008): Has the U.S. Campaign Finance System Collapsed? Article 3,

http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol6/iss1/art3; Anthony J. Corrado, Michael J. Malbin, Thomas E. Mann and Norman

J. Ornstein, Reform in an Age of Networked Campaigns: How to Foster Citizen Participation through Small Donors and

Volunteers (Washington DC; The Campaign Finance Institute, 2010),

http://www.cfinst.org/about/events/2010_01_14.aspx ; Michael J. Malbin, Campaign Finance, “After Citizens United:

Expand Democracy,” The American Interest, July/August 2010, pp. 54-57.

4 Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Scholzman and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics

(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 15-16. Also see Steven J. Rosenstone and John Mark Hansen,

Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America (New York: Macmillan, 1993).

5 Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U.S. 230 (2006).

6 Michael J. Malbin, Peter W. Brusoe, Wesley Joe, Jamie Pimlott, and Clyde Wilcox, "The CFI Small Donor Project: A

Preliminary Report on State Donors and Volunteers," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American

Political Science Association, August 30, 2007; Wesley Y. Joe, Michael J. Malbin, Clyde Wilcox, Peter W. Brusoe and

Jamie P. Pimlott, “Who Are the Individual Donors to Gubernatorial and State Legislative Elections,” paper presented

at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, April 3-6, 2008; revised version presented May

30, 2008 at the State Politics and Policy Conference at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA; Wesley Y. Joe, Michael J.

Malbin, Clyde Wilcox, Peter W. Brusoe and Jamie P. Pimlott, "Do Small Donors Improve Representation? Some

Answers from Recent Gubernatorial and State Legislative Elections," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the

American Political Science Association, Boston, MA, August 30, 2008; All are available at

http://cfinst.org/smallDonors.aspx.

7 For an overview of the history of campaign finance law in New York State and New York City, see Michael J. Malbin

and Peter W. Brusoe, “Campaign Finance Policy in the State and City of New York,” in Gerald Benjamin, ed., Handbook

of New York State Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). For an excellent history of the city’s law

through 2001, see Paul S. Ryan, A Statute of Liberty: How New York City’s Campaign Finance Law is Changing the Face

of Local Elections (Los Angeles CA: Center for Governmental Studies, 2003), p.9. Available at

http://cgs.org/images/publications/nycreport.pdf. Also see New York City Campaign Finance Board, A Brief History of

the CFB. Available at http://www.nyccfb.info/press/info/history.aspx . For a more skeptical view of the system, see

Jeffrey Kraus, “Campaign Finance Reform Reconsidered: New York City’s Public finance Program at Twenty,” in Costas

Panagopoulos, ed. Public Financing in American Elections (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2011), pp. 147-

75.

8 Ray Katz, “As Voter Turnout Dwindles, Some Look to a Tiny Agency for Help,” Gotham Gazette, July 2010. Available

at http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/governing/20100709/17/3309

9 Clifford Brown, Lynda Power and Clyde Wilcox, Serious Money: Fundraising and Contributing in Presidential

Nomination Campaigns (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Peter Francia, John Green, Paul Herrnson,

Lynda Powell and Clyde Wilcox, The Financiers of Congressional Elections: Investors, Ideologues and Intimates (New

York: Columbia University Press, 2003); Clyde Wilcox, Alexandra Cooper, Peter Francia, John Green, Paul Herrnson,

Lynda Powell, Jason Reifler, Mark J. Rozell and Benjamin A. Webster, “With Limits Raised, Who Will Give More” The

Impact of BCRA on Individual Donors,” in Michael J. Malbin, ed., Life after Reform: When the Bipartisan Campaign

Reform Act Meets Politics (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); Wesley Y. Joe, et al., “Who Are the Individual

Donors…,” supra, footnote 6; Wesley Y. Joe et al., “Do Small Donors Improve Representation…,” supra, footnote 6.

7/14/2011 Page 33 DRAFT


10

See supra, footnote 6.

11

U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Cartographic Boundary Files: Census Block Groups.” Available at

http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/bg_metadata.html. Accessed 27 June 2011.

12

GeoLytics, Inc. 2002. “Census 2000 Package”. East Brunswick, NJ.

13

Campaign Finance Institute, “Interactive Tool for Citizen Policy Analysts.” Available at

http://www.cfinst.org/state/CitizenPolicyTool.aspx. Careful readers may notice that the numbers on the website are

different from those in Table 1 because the website and table use slightly different dividing points for the

contribution ranges. These differences have no effect on the points being made here.

14

Angela Migally and Susan Liss, Small Donor Matching Funds: The NYC Election Experience (New York, NY: Brennan

Center for Justice, 2010), pp. 12-14.

15

Buckley v. Valeo 424 U.S. 1 (1976); Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 558 U.S. ___ (2010);

Speechnow.org v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-5223, ___F.3d___ (D.C. Cir. Mar. 26, 2010), cert. denied, Nov.

1, 2010.

16

U.S. Federal Election Commission, Advisory Opinion 2011-12, June 30, 2011; issued in response to an Advisory

Opinion Request filed by Majority PAC and House Majority PAC.

17

The phrase “checkbook participation” is from Verba, Scholzman and Brady, Voice and Equality, op. cit., p. 67. See

also Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon &

Schuster, 2000), p. 40.

18

Joseph A. Graf, Grant Reeher, Michael J. Malbin, and Costas Panagopoulos. Small Donors and Online Giving: A Study

of Donors to the 2004 Presidential Campaigns. (Washington DC: Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet and

the Campaign Finance Institute, 2006). Available at: http://www.cfinst.org/president/pdf/IPDI_SmallDonors.pdf

19

Malbin, et al., "The CFI Small Donor Project”, supra, n.5, pp. 5-6.

20

Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett, 564 U.S. ___ (2011).

21

Wesley Y. Joe, Michael J. Malbin, Clyde Wilcox, Peter. W. Brusoe and Henrik Schatzinger, "Individual Donors in

Connecticut's Public Financing Program: A Look at the First Election under the New System." Paper presented at the

Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, September 3-6, 2009.

22

Davis v. Federal Election Commission, 554 U.S. 724 (2008).

23

S.752 H.R.1826, H.R.6116, 111th

Congress, “Fair Elections Now Act”.

24

Conversation and emails with Karen Hobert Flynn, Vice President of State Operations, Common Cause, June 27-28,

2011.

25

Larry Levy and Andrew Rafalaf, “High Court’s Decision on Public Matching Funds Renders New York City’s Campaign

Finance System Ripe for Constitutional Attack,” Albany Government Law Review, Fireplace Blog, July 11, 2011.

http://aglr.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/high-courts-recent-decision-on-public-matching-funds-renders-new-york-

citys-campaign-finance-system-ripe-for-constitutional-attack-2/.

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