Clean Elections Update
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10/27/22
Hi Everyone,
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How are you?  I don’t have to remind you that the 2022 election is two weeks away.  Please vote.  If you need help in registering
(you still have time) or in voting, please let me know.
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As we prepare for the holidays, we thought we might share with you how the Clean Elections for San Diego campaign began and where we are today. Here is an article about the history of the Clean Elections for the City of San Diego campaign,  that will soon be on our web page.  We also invite you to visit our web page: CleanElectionsSanDiego.org and let us know what you think.  If you have any suggestions on the web page, please let us know.
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And we have included a message from Derek Casady on why he supports Clean Elections.   We would also like to give you a chance to share why you support clean elections. Send your article to our Clean Elections campaign coordinator, John Hartley, at hartley2k@aol.com and if you have any questions or suggestions regarding the campaign, send those in also, or call John at 619-299-8870.

History of the Clean Elections campaign for the City of San Diego
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The history of campaign finance reform for San Diego has been a long and tortuous one. The initial interest in the use of public funding for San Diego city elections by the use of Clean Elections, was initiated in 2000 when a local activist from La Jolla, Francoise Farron called a group together to work on Clean Elections for San Diego.
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Francoise Farron subscribed to the liberal Nation magazine and she got a list of her local subscribers for this meeting. Interesting, one of the original attendees was Derek Casady who is still highly active in the La Jolla community today and he is still a friend of clean elections for San Diego.
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Under Francoise’s leadership, the Alliance for Clean Elections was formed and the Alliance attempted to get a Clean Elections citizen initiative on the ballot in 2002 and 2003. Neither campaign was successful due to the high number of signatures needed to get a citizen initiative on the ballot. In the city of San Diego, any citizen initiative needs 10% of registered voters to qualify for the ballot. These dedicated volunteers were motivated but they just did not have the resources, a sufficient number of volunteers and funding,  to achieve their goal.
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In 2005, a new group called Neighborhoods for Clean Elections initiated a long term effort to build awareness and support for clean elections. In 2016, they again attempted to get a clean elections initiative on the ballot through the petition process. But even with more group and neighborhood endorsements and many more supporters, this attempt to get a clean elections measure on the ballot was also deemed to fail due to the high amount of signatures needed to get on the ballot. The campaign still did not have sufficient resources, volunteers and funding, to be successful.  By this time, the number of registered voters in the city of San Diego was over 800,000 and 10% of that, 80,000 signatures was just too high a bar to achieve.

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After a year of disappointment, the campaign for clean elections started anew. It was deemed too important to put aside and the campaign was restarted with a goal to see if the San Diego City Council might put clean elections on the ballot instead of trying to go the citizen initiative route.

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The campaign started meeting with San Diego city council members and their staff. The meetings went well and it looked like we had sufficient support of the city council to put clean elections on the ballot.  In 2019, we went before the full city council and to our surprise, two council members changed their minds at the last moment and while we got the support of four council members,  we needed five votes to be successful.

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Obviously, we were disappointed, but after another year of reflection, we again realized that clean elections was too important in reforming local politics and with the amount of support that we had built for clean elections,  we had to continue to fight for clean elections by targeting the 2024 presidential year election.  We again began a new series of meeting with both old supporters on the city council and the new council members as well as reaching out to more neighborhoods and groups for support for clean elections.
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This is where we are today.  After a series of positive meetings with San Diego’s city council members and their staff, we feel that we have their support to put a city-sponsored Clean Elections measure on the ballot in 2024.

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For more information on the clean elections campaign or if you want to help in any way, contact the campaign coordinator, John Hartley at 619-299-8870 or hartley2k@aol.com
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From Derek Casady, president, La Jolla Democratic Club,  organizer of San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition
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I support Clean Elections because they give everyday people a voice in City Council, Mayoral and City Attorney Elections in
San Diego.
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Under Clean Elections, a person who wants to run, say, for San Diego City Council, can go out and collect 500 five dollar contributions from friends and friends of friends, turn the money into City Hall and receive public funds sufficient to conduct a viable election.
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Under such a system, candidates who are publicly funded, if they are elected, owe their success to taxpayers, not special interest groups like developers  Also publicly funded candidates do not have to spend so much time “dialing for dollars” hour after hour, day after day. The result is that publicly funded candidates have more time to spend with constituents.

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Also, Public funding of candidates gives neighborhood a stronger voice in elections because neighborhoods can sponsor candidates by helping raise the 500 qualifying contributions that result in public funding of neighborhood-sponsored candidates.

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All in all, public funding of candidates makes for a stronger Democracy and breaks up the strangle hold that private money now exerts over our political system.
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Clean Elections San Diego

Clean Elections San Diego

6/15/22

4/6/2022
It Is Time For Clean Elections
By Mark Linsky, Chair, Clean Elections San Diego

Twenty Five years ago the journalist and political commentator Hendrik Hertzberg wrote: “Money, the curdled mother’s milk of politics, is the most humiliating, corrupting part of a politician’s life”. Not much has changed since he wrote that, but there is a way the system can be dramatically improved in San Diego. The answer is Clean Elections, in which the power of private interests and private monies are countered by candidates who are publically funded.
To qualify for the money a participating candidate must, among other things, agree not to solicit or accept private funds, must gather hundreds of $5 donations to show he or she in fact has the backing of the community from which they come and is not some fly-by-night opportunist. And the candidate cannot use personal funds as a work-around.
The advantages of Clean Elections are many including the obvious big one: It removes the shadow of special interests from the campaign itself. But it also empowers neighborhoods by giving well known and well respected local candidates a way to fund a competitive campaign without drinking that ‘curdled mother’s milk’. In addition it frees up a candidate to spend time out in the community, listening to neighbors, asking the right questions and gathering ideas from neighborhood organizations rather than spending countless hours raising money. Finally, if elected, the payoff is programs and policies which are enacted free from the taint of undue influence.
The only objection those of us involved in the Clean Elections campaign have heard over the years is the ‘cost’ of such a program. In our 2020 initiative the cost was pegged at about $4 per resident of the City of San Diego per year. Now we believe we can run it for even less. But citizens need to ask themselves the following: What has the ‘cost’ been in sweetheart deals, questionable practices and benefits accrued to private interests over past decades?
Clean Elections is an alternative to the present electoral system which can and should be implemented no later than 2024. Money will continue to flow to candidates willing to maintain the status quo, but as a new generation of publicly funded candidates run for and win office, the result will be policies and programs which increasingly benefit the citizens, not private interests. We talk about San Diego as ‘America’s Finest City’, and in many ways we are, but the time has come to add a better and more inclusive way of electing our representatives so that the slogan becomes equally meaningful when it comes to holding public office.