Common Cause

Public Financing Needed Now More Than Ever

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

Public Financing Needed Now More Than Ever

Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle featured an editorial about the upcoming Supreme Court decisions in the case of Citizens United vs. FEC. The editorial outlined how a narrow Supreme Court ruling could declare limits or bans on corporate independent expenditures are unconstitutional. With healthcare interests currently spending $1.4 million per day on lobbying the House and Senate, the Citizens United ruling could open the floodgates of corporate expenditures on political campaigns. Common Cause is backing both the Fair Elections Now Act for public financing of Congressional campaigns, and the California Fair Elections Act which would establish a pilot program for publicly financed Secretary of State races in California.

Click here to read the San Francisco Chronicle editorial discussing Citizens United and Common Cause’s work to overcome it.

Click here to read more about the California Fair Elections Act.

Click here to read more about the federal Fair Elections Now Act.

Click here to read more about Citizens United v. FEC

Californians Favor Reform - Think Elections Should be Won, Not Bought

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

Californians Favor Reform – Think Elections Should be Won, Not Bought

The California Fair Elections Campaign (of which Common Cause is a co-chair) released public survey data indicating 63% of likely voters in the June 2010 election support our ballot measure to establish a pilot program of full public financing for Secretary of State campaigns. The measure, which was signed by Governor Schwarzenegger as AB 583, would provide public campaign funds to qualified candidates who adhere to strictly enforced reporting requirements and spending limits and would ban participating candidates from raising funds from lobbyists, their clients, or any large donors.

See press coverage here in the Contra Costa Times and view poll results here.

To learn more about the California Fiar Elections Act and what you can do to help, visit our informational page, here.

Common Cause Calls for FPPC to Investigate Lobbyist Sex Scandal

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PST

California Common Cause Calls for FPPC to Investigate Lobbyist Sex Scandal

California Common Cause today called on the Fair Political Practices Commission to open an investigation into whether two lobbyists violated state law by engaging in affairs with former state legislator Mike Duvall.

"Voters need to know how widespread this practice is of lobbyists literally getting into bed with legislators, and since the legislature and Attorney General have both abandoned any investigation it is now incumbent upon the FPPC to take this on," said Derek Cressman, Western States Regional Director for Common Cause.

Click here to read Common Cause's complaint filed with the FPPC.

Click here to listen to Capitol Public Radio's interview with Derek Cressman.

Duvall resigned last month after being caught on videotape bragging to fellow Assemblymember Jeff Smith about the salacious details of sexual trysts he was having with lobbyists. Some newspapers have indentified one of the lobbyists as an employee of Sempra Energy.

Sempra Energy has donated more than $11,000 to Assembly Speaker Karen Bass in the past three years and gave over $10,000 to Jerry Brown’s campaign for Attorney General in 2006. Beyond that, Sempra gave more than $275,000 to the California Democratic Party in the past three years.

"Sempra gave big money to our elected officials and those officials then declined to investigate this matter regarding a Sempra lobbyist," noted Kathay Feng, Executive Director of California Common Cause. "That is precisely the sort of dynamic that makes Californian’s skeptical about our current campaign finance system and our current legislature."

Beyond a full investigation of this incident, Common Cause is calling for tighter lobbyist disclosure rules and a system of public financing of political campaigns so that legislators don’t need to raise funds from private interests like Sempra.

Click here to read the full press release.