Faces of Small Donor Public Financing 2021

“It’s a virtuous cycle, where the voter is empowered and the candidate is empowered and incentivized to talk to everyday people. The match incentivized the small house party, the small conversation with a resident who is from your jurisdiction, who can actually vote for you. From the voter’s perspective, they then became more powerful and more influential in getting the ear of the people who are running to represent them, which is what you want. You want us to be listening to the largest amount of people as possible — and obviously through our own lens of our values and what we think should happen, we make our own final decisions on how we vote or how we move forward — but you want to have a wide level of input and you want that to be a diverse array of folks. I know that we had over a hundred house parties. I know several of my colleagues did the same.”

“Collecting $5 donations is better than asking businesses and organizations for money. It’s a one-on-one way to do it. It’s a better way of running for office. It’s hard for me to ask for $5, let alone a thousand dollars. But I do think it’s important if you’re going to run.

And people participate more with public financing. I explained to donors how important it was that I could listen to all people, because you can collect from all parties. And once you’re elected, you represent all parties. And I felt very good about that. Sometimes the party will say, ‘You have to do this,’ but I would say, ‘No, I have to listen to everybody once I’m elected.’”

“The public financing system encourages small intimate gatherings, and it is so refreshing to have one-on-one time with a voter rather than trying to raise money in a back room or a boardroom. It’s a better way to campaign and it’s a better way to govern. And it’s the clean way as well. I’ve done both and was able to fundraise under both — and I much prefer public financing. In order to successfully participate in public financing, you need solid roots in the community because that’s the only way you’re going to tap into the large network that you need to be successful.”

“I wouldn’t be where I am today if not for public financing. I come from a hardworking family, but not a wealthy one. When I first ran for office, I did not know millionaires, and I did not know those with deep pockets — but I knew those who wanted to have a voice in government and have a seat at the table. The public financing system in New York City gave me the opportunity to compete and succeed, allowing me to represent individuals whose voices have been historically ignored and who wanted a representative who looked like them, who understood their values, and recognized their struggles. It’s imperative that our government be reflective of the people it represents, and public financing is a critical tool to ensure that more people from diverse backgrounds have the opportunity to hold elected office and serve our communities.”

“I’m not someone who can call on many rich friends and ask for $500 donations, which is the maximum contribution amount here in San Francisco. But I’m someone who has worked with communities on the ground, here in our city and in the Bay Area for decades, and those community members could pitch in small donations. We raised small amounts from lots of people and ultimately, campaign donations are investments from the donors in what outcomes they want to see in their lives. Public financing means investments from lower-income people can pay off too, in that more people connected to low-income communities and grassroots organizations can run and win. It fundamentally changes access to public office for the better.”

“I’m a Black woman in DC. I’m not independently wealthy — my friends are in public service, or teachers, or work at nonprofits, or government. I don’t know a lot of folks who are able to just very easily write $1,500 checks or $1,200 checks. . . . And public financing lowers the threshold to allow you to compete. But I also feel like it takes some things off the table so that people are actually listening to your message.

As a first-time candidate, there is a whole conversation of whether you have the established donor list to raise money to be able to compete. . . . But for much of the campaign I was able to keep pace [with candidates who didn’t use public financing], and I actually think that demonstrated to folks this can work, you can compete.”

“As a Native American woman — I am Seneca and Mingo — public financing gave me an advantage. It’s really hard for anybody to raise money to run for office, but women are generally more disadvantaged in raising money for races. A lot of us are not at the table where the big money is. And women don’t know as many people that have the money. So just by virtue of that, we’re starting at a deficit in fundraising. It is tougher.

Clean elections give us a chance to level the playing field so that we’re not getting elected based on how much money is in our bank account and how rich our friends are. Clean elections level the playing field so that you run on your ideas, you run on your ability, you run on your personality, you run on who you are and what you have done and what you can do, and not the number on your bank account.”

“For one of my first fundraisers in 2013, I walked into a Mexican restaurant and went to the back room and there were all these families there. A group of Mexican moms were also there and excited to meet me. It was all done in Spanish and the maximum amount they had was $20. I connect to that because these were families that have never given to any candidate and here I was, engaging them. I’m still so overwhelmed by that experience. In another world where there was no campaign finance like this, they would have never been asked to give. Their money wasn’t a lot, but it didn’t have to be a lot, and it’s just a game changer.

They became part of the campaign and were invested for it all. Those same families, they were now in it for life. When the campaign was over, when we went into participatory budgeting, it was the same families that said, ‘We’re going to do canvassing, we’re going to go door knocking, we’re going to get votes for participatory budgeting in the spring.’ They were now part of the system and they were empowered.”

“Not only did we hear people say, ‘Hey, this is the first time I’ve ever donated,’ but the map shows it so explicitly. . . . If you look at the contributions for the at-large city council seats like mine, you saw people donating in the South End, historically Black and Brown areas of the city, in the North End, a historically lower income area of our city. You saw people who were donating across the city in areas that had been previously redlined and have the existing consequences of redlining. So, you see higher numbers of renters and people of color who are contributing in ways that they hadn’t before.”

“Public election financing that incentivizes small dollar grassroots fundraising means that candidates don’t just spend their time talking to people who can afford to give $2,000. Instead, what’s incentivized is talking to everyday people about participating in democracy, and getting them to organize their friends. I like asking people to raise for me even better than I like asking them to contribute and obviously way better than I like asking them to write a large check. A small-donor public match gives far more people a chance to meaningfully contribute to a campaign. And all the evidence shows that once people have contributed, they’re much more likely to vote and participate in other ways and in those elections.”

“When financing campaigns, you want to have participation on the part of your constituents and voters because that gets them involved and shows whether you have the support to ultimately win. The problem with private funding is that it doesn’t allow the common person to get into the process, participate as fully in the process. Candidates spend a lot more time fundraising, and there’s not enough time to campaign, to get your message out, to fully engage the public. The appeal to me of public financing was: we can get more of the common man and woman to participate in the system. With public financing, you’re not asking for a donation, you’re meeting with people to talk about what’s on their minds, what the issues are. Oftentimes I got great ideas from constituents on a bill proposal.”

“In governing and policy, the biggest thing is that public financing allows people who will push the envelope. There are some policies that get put on the back burner because people are more focused on other things. You have folks who are just making decisions based on people they speak to. But the public financing system allows folks to listen to the masses of people because it spreads out who has the ability to touch elected officials. You can speak to people who give $5 and $10 — and that’s all they can afford — just as much as people who can cut a $2,000 check. And it’s important to be able to balance that out for the betterment of the entire city.”

“Hearing from thousands of people who are just normal people in your district will make a difference in how you govern. I spent almost my entire legislative career fighting with the chemical industry. . . . And I was a part of national groups of environmental legislators talking about these bills and a lot of other legislators said, ‘How do you pass that? The chemical lobby in our state is so powerful!’ And clearly in Maine, they would give money to some members of leadership, they would give money to people running traditional campaigns possibly, but the vast majority of rank-and-file members didn’t interact with those lobbyists, and they weren’t getting money from them. . . . And that played out on a number of things: tax policy, environmental bills, budget decisions. You’ve seen Maine in the last 20 years pass a lot of first- or among the first-in-the-nation bills.”

“Over the course of the primary local election cycle in 2017, I visited 117 different living rooms and received contributions anywhere from $10 to the maximum $150. I haven’t forgotten any of those conversations and I carry them with me to this day. And so, as we legislate now, those conversations come back into play and you connect a lot more dots that way, which I think provides a perspective and a perch that I would like to think makes me a better legislator. One of the first items that my council colleagues and I passed was a racial equity and social justice bill which now mandates the council to review the impacts of all legislation, both budgetarily and legislatively, and its effects on communities of color and those communities that have been disproportionately impacted. And so, I think that constituents who contributed to not just my campaign, but to my colleagues as well, are paying attention and remain engaged to ensure that we create a more just and inclusive community.”

“The program that we have here in Connecticut gave the opportunity for me to be held accountable, and we all should be held accountable more often. If you really believe in the process, in the role we’re supposed to play in our society, we should want to be held accountable. I should have to prove it to people that I’m worthy of being reelected, given the magnitude of the decisions that I have to make. Public financing creates opportunity for different people from all walks of life, and in particular those underrepresented populations that don’t have all the same opportunities that mostly white men, but even Latino males like myself, have to run for public office. There is a diversity of opinion and perspectives that are now allowed to access the process. When you have people from all walks of life being able to participate in the process, you end up with a better public policy in a lot of ways.”