Video from lieutenant governor candidate Dean Corren’s rally on campaign financing.
BURLINGTON – Fat checks from private companies and wealthy individuals don’t belong in Vermont elections, lieutenant governor candidate Dean Corren said Thursday at a downtown news conference.
Corren, who is seeking to represent the Democratic and Progressive parties in the race against incumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Scott this fall, called for the public financing of all elections in Vermont.
Corren said public financing would make politicians more honest.
Corren said his message is not an attack on Scott. In general, corporations and PACs donate because it behooves them, he said. Corren has qualified for up to $200,000 in public campaign funding, while Scott does not support the use of public money in elections.
“You have to believe who is paying the piper is calling the tunes,” Corren said.
Corren, standing in front of Burlington’s puzzle piece democracy statue, said it would “be wonderful if” Gov. Peter Shumlin also stopped accepting campaign donations from corporations and PACs.
“Democracy requires participation and not just opening a big checkbook. (It requires) thinking, debating, helping and, yes, running,” he said.
Corren is the first candidate to qualify for public financing since Progressive Steve Hingtgen ran for the same seat in the 2004 election cycle, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
Vermont’s 1998 public financing law applies only to races for governor and lieutenant governor. To qualify for financing in the lieutenant governor’s race, a candidate must raise at least $17,500 from no fewer than 750 individual contributions of no more than $50 each.
For gubernatorial candidates, the limits change to $35,000 from 1,500 qualified individual contributions, still capped at $50.
Corren raised $19,000 and the balance of the $200,000 comes from a public financing pool of money from fees paid to the Secretary of State. In the event of a shortfall in the fund, candidates would receive less money.
According to VTDigger’s campaign finance database, Scott raised $191,316.01 in the 2011-2012 election cycle, of which he spent $129,192.20.
He plans to set his own fundraising goal this year to match Corren’s $200,000, Scott said.
Scott opposes public financing because the money could be better spent performing government duties such as filling potholes or hiring social workers.
“There are other ways to spend taxpayer money,” Scott told VTDigger last month.
Corren said he believes he can win the election based on his record and grassroots volunteers, not the amount of money in his campaign chest.
Corren was a four-term state representative in the 1990s and a former aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. He’s now employed as an energy scientist working on underwater hydropower for a firm based in New York state. Corren is running primarily on a health care reform platform.
If he receives the Democratic party nomination, laws prohibit Corren from accepting money from the state party, he said. But he said he wants manpower, not money.
“We are so constrained, and appropriately so, that no one can give us anything,” he said.
Public financing of elections is a way to counter U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have allowed candidates to seek uncapped amounts of money from corporations, wealthy individuals and political action committees who do not have to disclose who has donated to them, he said.
Scott took 83 percent of his campaign funding from corporate, PAC and individual contributions over $100 each, whereas public financing costs Vermonters 29 cents each in this campaign, Corren said.
In Washington, the Senate Judiciary Committee recently endorsed a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the ability to regulate national campaign fundraising and spending.
The amendment, in conjunction with other campaign finance reform legislation, would go a long way toward making a fairer political system that shuts out “big money,” said David Donnelly, executive director of the national campaign finance watchdog group Public Campaign Action Fund.
Liberty Union candidate Marina Brown is also running for the state’s No. 2 job.
