New Haven Independent

With a unanimous 25-0 vote Monday, the Board of Aldermen fine-tuned New Haven’s first-in-the-state municipal campaign finance law, the Democracy Fund Ordinance. The voluntary program gives grants to qualifying mayoral candidates who agree to limit campaign spending.

The changes incorporate several lessons learned from the program’s rocky roll-out during the 2007 mayoral race. Click here to read the amended ordinance. Click here and here to follow the fine-tuning process undertaken by the Democracy Fund board.

The most significant change concerns the how much money candidates have to raise before they qualify for a matching public grant.

The new law says that a candidate must drum up contributions of between $10 and $300 from at least 200 New Haven voters in order to qualify for matching funds. The minimum threshold was dropped to $10 from $30 to give candidates a better chance at making the cut.

If candidates raise that money, they qualify for a 2-1 match in city funds, capped at $50 per qualifying contribution. In exchange for accepting the money, candidates agree to limit their spending to $338,000 for the primary and $338,000 for the general election.

The amended law also requires candidates to let the board know if they withdraw their bid or get nominated by a political party. The law also spells out what to do if the primary collapses.

Those lessons came straight from the 2007 election.

In 2007 the city became Connecticut’s first to offer mayoral candidates matching money if they agree to limit how much they spend. However the noble-sounding plan — aimed at enabling more challengers to run serious campaigns for office; reducing the influence of wealthy special interests; and limiting the amount of time candidates raise money instead of engaging issues — ended up having less of an impact in that election than was hoped. Several challengers failed to qualify for the program.

The only candidate who got matching funds was Mayor John DeStefano. The mayor — who championed the law and agreed to take part in the program even though he could have raised a lot more money — ended up only partially qualifying for matching funds. Due to an accounting error, his campaign incorrectly thought it had raised donations from enough local contributors to qualify for a $15,000 grant. (The Fund originally cut the mayor a $27,000 check, then had to have $15,000 of it returned.)

Despite challengers’ failure to qualify, Robert Wechsler, the Democracy Fund Board administrator, contended the program did have an effect on the 2007 election. “Every candidate participated in it and, except for the mayor and Mr. Newton, the candidates said the Democracy Fund was an important factor in their decision to run.”

So far this year, DeStefano is facing opposition from only one candidate, the Independent Party’s Ralph Ferrucci. Ferrucci announced to the press he intends to run but he has not yet filed necessary paperwork. Both have said they intend to join the clean elections program.

“We are proud to participate in the Democracy fund in this election,” said DeStefano’s campaign spokeswoman, Keya Jayaram. The mayor has “almost reached the number of contributions necessary to qualify,” she wrote in an email.

The mayor sees no urgency to qualify, she added, “given that there is not at present a declared opponent.”

Even if no opponent emerges, the DeStefano campaign intends to “voluntarily stay within the Democracy Fund contribution and spending guidelines, and to abide by the rules and regulations of the Democracy Fund,” she said.