Senator Loni Hancock hosted a fundraiser lunch at Chops Restaurant today. There’s nothing unusual about that other than she wrote Prop 15, which says, “the current campaign finance system fuels the public perception of corruption at worst and conflict of interest at best…” Opponents of Prop 15 provided dessert, which was delivered to the Hancock fundraiser.
Man – you gotta love ironies… the initiative to get “BIG MONEY” out of politics is a yet another scam. From Schubert Flint PA (the outfit running no on 15) comes this doozy:
SACRAMENTO – The state senator who wrote Proposition 15, “to break the connection between political donations and public policy” broke bread with lobbyists and other political players at a fundraiser her campaign committee hosted today at a Sacramento steakhouse.
Senator Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), who doesn’t face reelection until 2012, invited Sacramento lobbyists to Chops Restaurant for a “sponsor” contribution of $3,900 – the maximum amount any individual may contribute to a single election campaign. Tickets are also available for $1,000.
“Even by Sacramento standards, the hypocrisy is astonishing,” said Richard Wiebe , spokesperson for StopProp15.com. “She’s taking full advantage of the system she characterizes as the root of all that is evil in the Capitol.”
The state Legislature put Prop 15 on the June ballot when it passed AB 583 in 2008, authored by then-Assemblywoman Hancock. Proposition 15 repeals the voter-approved ban on public financing of campaigns and imposes a new tax on lobbyists, lobbying firms and lobbyist employers to pay for a pilot program that would use public money to finance campaigns for Secretary of State. While the pilot program sunsets after two election cycles, the ban on public campaign financing is repealed permanently. The Legislature, which wrote the ballot label, neglected to mention that fact, but a Superior Court judge recently ordered that Prop 15’s ballot label point out – in the first sentence – that it, “Repeals ban on public financing of political campaigns.”
“Proposition 15 would not stop politicians from raising money from lobbyists and special interest groups,” Wiebe said. “It explicitly allows politicians to raise money for ‘separate accounts’ to pay for things like legal defense fees, inaugural parties and officeholder expenses. Nor does it address independent expenditure campaigns, which undermine campaign finance laws, according to the FPPC and many others.”
California voters have already rejected public campaign financing in no uncertain terms. Just four years ago, 74 percent of voters opposed Proposition 89. In 2000, two-thirds of voters said NO to public campaign financing when they defeated Proposition 25.
I’m so disappointed in you, York. Someone told me “Sergeant York did a post about Proposition 15,” so I rushed to my laptop, thinking you had finally responded properly to my March 3 post, http://orangejuiceblog.com/2010/03/prop-15-a-retort-to-seargeant-york/. Something beyond your vague assertions that the voluntary program would somehow be an “assault on free speech.” Something beside your irrelevant invocation of European hate-speech laws. Something substantive about the merits of the bill.
Alas, it was just this warmed-over press release from the No on 15 consultants Schubert-Flint (known mainly to us as the pushers of Proposition Hate in ’08) Can’t you see how meaningless this story is? Consultants are PAID to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks, but you don’t need to pass it on as though it had substance.
In short, there is NO HYPOCRISY HERE, or hipocricy or however you want to spell it. Loni Hancock is trying to help create a system of clean financing for elections – the election of the Secretary of State. Somehow this means that she has to unilaterally disarm and give up fundraising? HELLO? And in your mind this makes the initiative a “scam??” The system doesn’t even exist yet, let alone exist for state senate races!
What next? Loni is supposed to take a vow of poverty and chastity? AM I GETTING THROUGH TO YOU SERGEANT???