Should Florida end public campaign financing?
Bottom Line: I don’t know about you, but I’d be just fine if our tax dollars were never used as campaign contributions again. In the soon-to-be state session,there’s a bill for that...
Current Florida law allows for qualified political candidates for state-wide offices to obtain dollar for dollar matching for political campaign contributions under $250. Not only did the state of Florida pay out millions in public money to match contributions to Ron DeSantis’s and Andrew Gillum’s campaigns...we paid out millions to primary losers Graham ($1.2 million) and Putnam ($1.1 million). Here’s the overall scorecard for what we paid out:
- 2018: $9.85 million (between the governor, AG, CFO & Agriculture races)
Something tells me there’s a better use of this tax money. Another key consideration is how rapidly the cost to taxpayers is rising. In the 2014 cycle, $4.3 million was paid out through the Florida matching law. There was a 229% increase in matching contributions from one cycle to the next!
The argument for the match has been the ability to help level the playing field and provide opportunity for candidates that aren’t exceptionally well funded. But the truth is, it hasn’t served that purpose. The top four recipients were all well-funded Democrats and Republicans in the Governor’s race. Tomorrow, as the state session kicks off, the Senate Ethics and Elections committee with take up a proposal that’d put an end to the public match in Florida. The proposal in the state senate matches a proposal in the state house introduced by Rick Roth.
I’ll keep you posted.