Clean Elections: Public Financing in Six States, including New Jersey's Pilot Projects

              When the New Jersey Legislature proposed a Clean Elections program in 2004 as part of its ethics agenda, many
questions were left unanswered. What are Clean Elections? Do other states have similar programs? What can
we learn from them? By what processes were they enacted and what makes them unique? Most importantly,
have they been successful?
The New Jersey Project of the Eagleton Institute of Politics was pleased to address these and other questions
when presented with an opportunity to adapt an undergraduate thesis written by Benjamin Brickner of Lawrenceville,
N.J. while he was a senior at Cornell University. Ben, together with Naomi Mueller, a graduate student at
Rutgers’s Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy and previously a reporter for the Asbury Park
Press, updated and edited his thesis to produce this Guide to Clean Elections in New Jersey.
Brickner and Mueller’s work enables the New Jersey Project to provide information about Clean Elections in an
accessible format consistent with Eagleton’s mission to educate citizens and encourage their participation in politics
in order to strengthen our democracy. An important goal of Clean Elections is to enable individuals of modest
means or those without established networks of political support to run for public office. Clean Elections allows
candidates to focus their campaign activities on engaging the voters rather than raising campaign funds.
Clean Elections, which began in Maine during the mid-1990s as an effort to reform how campaigns are financed,
is not widely known and its definition is not easy to find. New Jersey statutes do not provide one. Others have
called Clean Elections the voluntary public financing of campaigns for public office. Common Cause describes
Clean Elections as “public financing of political campaigns.” Wikipedia calls it “a system of government financing
of political campaigns.” The Center for Governmental Studies reserves the term for “full public financing.”
Although the word “clean” is often used in contrast to campaigns considered mean spirited or divisive, the term
“clean elections” does not refer to how campaigns are run. Rather, Clean Elections is a type of campaign finance
reform that offers candidates for elected office an alternative to private fundraising and an opportunity to run
campaigns supported with public funds. To receive these funds, candidates must first demonstrate a threshold
level of public support by collecting a minimum number of nominal contributions from registered voters. Candidates
must also agree to rely solely upon public funds for all of their campaign expenses. Clean Elections seeks
to neutralize a potential source of official corruption: the undue influence of private campaign contributors on the
actions of our elected public officials.
This book is presented in four chapters that may be read individually or in sequence:
CHAPTER ONE illustrates the context of Clean Elections by describing historical American campaign
finance reform and modern campaign finance practices.
CHAPTER TWO presents the common features of Clean Elections and describes how this program
was designed in six states: Maine, Vermont, Arizona, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Connecticut.
CHAPTER THREE recounts how various political and legislative events led to Clean Elections in
six states: Maine, Vermont, Arizona, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Clean Elections: Public Financing in Six States, including New Jersey's Pilot Projects
— vi —
CHAPTER FOUR details New Jersey’s experience with Clean Elections, including adoption and
implementation of the 2005 and 2007 pilot projects.
AN APPENDIX compares side-by-side the significant provisions of Clean Elections laws in six
states: Maine, Vermont, Arizona, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey.
Because Clean Elections is relatively new in practice, its study is far from complete. We look forward to comments
and suggestions for improving the usefulness of this publication and for keeping it current as the story of
Clean Elections unfolds. In addition to the six states we discuss here, Clean Elections reform is underway and in
various planning stages in cities, counties and states across the country, as well as in the United States Congress.
We hope this contribution to the literature will assist these and other jurisdictions in adapting, adopting and
amending Clean Elections to suit their unique political systems.
Ingrid W. Reed New Brunswick, NJ
Director of the New Jersey Project August 2008