Jaded political pros will tell you voters hate big money in politics so much, they’d even support a tax hike if it were labeled, “campaign finance reform.”

That’s probably a stretch – and it sells the public short – but it does underscore the deceptive allure of so many proposals over the years to “get money out of politics.” Every such effort at every level of government, throughout Colorado and across the country, has been an utter failure. The policies in fact have made matters much worse.

And yet plenty of the voting public continues to rally around the cause, hope against hope, and remains receptive to ever-newer proposals of the same old spiel. It’s as if to say, “maybe this time, they’ll get it right.”

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Hence, the decision by Denver voters in 2018 to create the Fair Elections Fund – which, of course, flunked its debut in Denver’s 2023 municipal election. This time, the effort even had a twist, offering candidates a carrot to stay on the straight and narrow when raising campaign contributions in any race for Denver office.

It was to no avail – surprising none of the Colorado political gurus from across the spectrum who recently went on the record with Gazette Executive Editor Vince Bzdek.

Plugged-in progressive political consultant Ian Silverii, for example, summed up the new policy as “an abject failure.”

Candidates who agree to participate get matching funds for each contribution they receive of $50 or less. The match is at a 9-to-1 ratio, so that’s $450 for each $50 donation. Denver taxpayers get stuck with the tab, with $8 million budgeted for the matching funds in this spring’s municipal races. The candidates also agree to a cap on all contributions over $50 – the maximum allowable donation varies with the office sought – and candidates may accept contributions only from individuals and so-called small-donor committees (which in most cases are big labor unions). 

Never mind that the policy didn’t stop the candidates who raised the most money from winning and didn’t even erode their vote totals. In the mayoral race, the two candidates who were by far the top fund-raisers also wound up with by far the most votes. The only effect the Fair Elections Fund had on their campaigns was to subsidize them with tax dollars.

Never mind, as well, the role the fund played in fostering candidacies that never had a prayer but stayed in the race for the tax-funded free ride. All they did was make it nearly impossible to choreograph the first-round election debates.

The fund’s fundamental flaw was the same as it ever has been in prior iterations of campaign reform: Restricting campaign fund-raising by individual candidates’ campaigns only diverts the money into the coffers of “independent expenditure committees.” And they do a lot more damage than the campaigns do.

There’s far less disclosure of their contributors; far less accountability over their expenditures, and no limits on the size of their bankrolls. They sling mud with abandon.

All of which is exactly what happened in the campaigns leading up to Denver’s April 4 general election and the June 6 runoff. More than $5 million flowed into the independent committees; a lot of the money even came from out-of-state billionaires like Wall Streeter Michael Bloomberg.

Those independent committees have the right to do what they do so long as they don’t coordinate with the campaigns they support or oppose. The courts have said so.

Like it or not, political funding equates with political speech. Any attempt to limit it will backfire – but politicians will keep pitching it so long as the rest of us buy into it.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board