Massachusetts voters advise axing Clean Elections law

By The Associated Press

11.06.02

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BOSTON — Four years after overwhelmingly approving the state's campaign-finance law, Massachusetts voters did an abrupt about-face, voting 3-to-1 yesterday to advise lawmakers to ax the state's Clean Elections measure.

Advocates cried foul, saying the wording of the question — "Do you support taxpayer money being used to fund political campaigns for public office in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?" — was deliberately skewed by lawmakers.

The law, which provides public dollars to candidates who agree to campaign fundraising and spending limits, met with bitter resistance on Beacon Hill, where legislators refused to fund or abolish it. After the state's highest court intervened, lawmakers agreed to pay for the law for one year and put an advisory question on the ballot.

Clean Elections supporters said the wording of the nonbinding ballot question was designed to give lawmakers an excuse to kill campaign-finance reform.

They said when voters were told the public money would only go to candidates who agreed to campaign fundraising and spending limits, they supported the question.

House Speaker Thomas Finneran, a Boston Democrat, led the charge to derail Clean Elections. He did not return telephone calls seeking comment last night.

Advocates pointed to 11 districts, including Finneran's, where voters were given a chance to cast a ballot on another nonbinding question with the expanded wording.

In each district, the question with the expanded language was approved, according to Clean Elections spokesman Joe O'Brien. In most of those same districts, voters simultaneously decided to kill Clean Election by rejecting Question 3.

Those who oppose the law, including Finneran, said the state can't afford to give money to candidates, especially in the middle of an ongoing fiscal crisis.

Opponents were helped by a deluge of contributions from corporations and wealthy individuals, who poured more than $600,000 into the campaign to defeat the campaign-finance law, including $50,000 each from Liberty Mutual Life Insurance, John Hancock Financial Services, State Street Bank and Fidelity Investments.

The money was used in part to pay for a flurry of television ads in the days leading up to the election.

First Amendment advocates who oppose campaign-finance reform say such measures unconstitutionally restrict political speech.

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