Study: Campaign refund is a national model
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SUNY professor Michael Malbin runs Washington's Campaign Finance Institute and says that Minnesota is making a mistake by ending a state refund for small political contributions.
His group released a new study today.
"Minnesotans participate in the system, financially, at a much greater rate than the rest of the nation," Malbin said in an interview this afternoon. "About 5 percent of adults make a political contributions. That's really big. The more normal number around the nation is more like 1 percent."
Malbin says the Legislature ought to try to reinstate the money for the program next year. He says it will be the big year for candidate contributions, and it helps turn constitutents from "town hall meeting" observers and supplicants to active participants in the political process. "The result is, you get better representation."
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He said he uses Minnesota as an example of what states can do to reform campaign finance when he speaks around the nation.
Republicans beg to differ, and deputy party chair Michael Brodkorb did exactly that this afternoon. "I don't think there is a role for the state government in terms of spending money, regardless of whether there's money in the bank or whether there is a deficit... in funding partisan campaigns. I just don't see how that could ever be a legitimate priority."
That's despite numbers from Malbin that show party contribution refunds favored the Republicans by a nearly 2-to-1 margin in 2007, the last year the study looked at.
"Our party will clearly take a hit," Brodkorb said, "but we'll just have to work harder at grassroots involvement."