--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I was talking with a friend last night about our surprise that > Mayor Rybak has not cancelled his fundraiser at the Kaplan's.
<snip> > Many of the people voted into the City Council and the Mayor's > office are there not due to a great faith in their ability to govern. > People were just fed up with SSB and the others that displayed no > particular concern for what the common folks thought or needed. <snip> > And it does seem arrogant to be called on a another broken > campaign promise and not take steps to rectify that situation. > Instead (per Doug Grow) the Mayor is upset that he was called on > this behavior. [TB] If I were the mayor and I was planning to run for re-election, I'd hold the fund raiser. Since we don't provide public financing of campaigns, which is in reality a part of the cost of an election (how do I decide who to vote for if none of the candidates campaign?) a candidate for Mayor is going to need to raise somewhere between a quarter and half million dollars to have a competitive campaign. That is not an easy task. A candidate for Mayor cannot accept more than $500 from any individual during the election year (2005) or more than $100 from any individual during other years. If you haven't raised any money during 2003, why not start on New Years Eve as you can then hit those donors up again in 2004. It makes the job easier. That may voters likely were voting against his predecessor rather than him is more reason to start raising money early. He started from a position of weakness and in 2 years hasn't done anything to make his position any stronger. The real problem isn't that we have a candidate for the 2005 election for Mayor of the City of Minneapolis who is already out raising money, it's that we have a finance system which forces him to do it. There are some solutions to that problem: -We could extend the state political contribution refund program to include candidates for elections for cities and counties, even school boards. As with state elections candidates who agree to limit funding can give a receipt to donors which allows the donors to get up to $50 back from the state. Virtually all candidates for the legislature and state constitutional officers sign up for the program, we don't have the really big money going into those campaigns that you see in many states. -Expand the state public financing available from tax checkoffs to local offices. This is a little trickier because of the political party component of the checkoff and local races being officially non-partisan. I think we could solve that issue. Again participation in the 2 programs, which are linked, require limits on campaign spending. -A city program similar to the state programs. Likely prohibited by the current budget situation, however, clean and fair elections SHOULD be a priority. $2 million dollars per election cycle (or $500,000) per year would provide $60,000 for each ward election (the state base limit for candidates for MN House of Representatives in 2002 was $27,380 per candidate) and nearly $1.25 million for mayoral candidates. $1.5 million per election cycle would provide that same Council funding and nearly three quarters of a million for mayoral candidates. Mayor Rybak was stupid to say during the campaign that he wouldn't do any fund raising between elections. Perhaps at the time he didn't expect to be elected and need to worry about the statement. In these days of parsing words, I half expect to hear the explanation that the 2005 election campaign has already started. Given that we don't provide any public funding for clean campaigns, perhaps what is truly unfortunate is that no one is out there raising money to run challenge him in 2005. Terrell Brown Loring Park __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
