Assembly Bill 2949 will be heard by the Assembly Elections committee on Tuesday, April 20 in Sacramento. This bill would implement public campaign financing for the statewide and state constitutional offices, as well as the state legislature, in California. While the Green Party supports public campaign financing in general, unfortunately this bill greatly discriminates against us, and all other smaller parties. For many elections, we will likely be banned from being able to participate at all in the public campaign financing process, and even when we could participate, we would almost certainly be relegated to a "second tier" of candidates, able to qualify for just 20% to 50% of the money available to Democrats or Republicans!
Therefore it is imperative that we immediately lobby our state legislators to amend this bill, to remove the discrimantory provisions! (We also need to send a delegation to Sacramento for the April 20 hearing, tentatively scheduled for the State Capitol, room 444, 1:30 to 4:00 pm). If you can attend, please have your county contact notify me about Greens in your county who will be able to be there, or you can leave me a message at (510) 444-7336).
PLEASE SEE BELOW for the legislator(s) to focus on, their contact information, and for specific information about AB 2949. We need to lobby as many legislators as possible NO LATER than this coming FRIDAY, APRIL 16!! (Also, please forward copies of your letters, faxes, and e-mails to your county contact, so we can keep track of how we are doing with our lobbying efforts!).
Thank you VERY MUCH (in advance) for helping us to lobby for amending AB 2949 -- so we can have public campaign financing in California which does NOT discriminate against us!
Dear Greens,
We need to lobby our state legislators immediately to get the public campaign financing bill amended so it doesn't discriminate against us! (Please see the message below for details!).
Therefore, please forward the message below (without my e-mail address) to everyone in your county who might possibly be able to help with this -- we need to mount a massive statewide lobbying effort to get this bill amended!
Then -- PLEASE E-MAIL ME BACK to let me know that you are publicizing this to Greens in your county! (I also encourage you to telephone several Greens in your county to urge them to help us with the lobbying). As folks contact their legislators, please let me know what's happening, and/or forward me copies of their letters (as plain text -- no attachments, please!). And lastly, please e-mail me the names of any Greens in your county who will be able to attend the committee hearing on April 20 in Sacramento, along with their contact info. ("names only", without contact info., is fine for Sacramento and Yolo Greens who can attend).
Thank you, in advance! I look forward to HEARING FROM ALL OF YOU -- very, very soon!
Sincerely,
Greg Jan
Oakland, CA
Please lobby NOW on AB 2949 ("Discriminatory" Public Campaign Financing)!
Dear Greens,
Assembly Bill 2949 will be heard by the Assembly Elections committee on Tuesday, April 20 in Sacramento. This bill would implement public campaign financing for the statewide and state constitutional offices, as well as the state legislature, in California. While the Green Party supports public campaign financing in general, unfortunately this bill greatly discriminates against both us, and all other smaller parties. For many elections, we will likely be banned from being able to participate at all in the public campaign financing process, and even when we could participate, we would almost certainly be relegated to a "second tier" of candidates, able to qualify for just 20% to 50% of the money available to Democrats or Republicans!
Therefore it is imperative that we immediately lobby our state legislators to amend this bill, to remove the discrimantory provisions! (We also need to send a delegation to Sacramento for the April 20 hearing, tentatively scheduled for the State Capitol, room 444, 1:30 to 4:00 pm). If you can attend, please have your county contact notify me about Greens in your county who will be able to be there, or you can leave me a message at (510) 444-7336).
PLEASE SEE BELOW for the legislator(s) to focus on, their contact information, and for specific information about AB 2949. We need to lobby as many legislators as possible NO LATER than this coming FRIDAY, APRIL 16!! (Also, please forward copies of your letters, faxes, and e-mails to your county contact, so we can keep track of how we are doing with our lobbying efforts!).
Thank you VERY MUCH (in advance) for helping us to lobby for amending AB 2949 -- so we can have public campaign financing in California which does NOT discriminate against us!
Sincerely,
Greg Jan
Oakland, CA
Who should I lobby?
If you live in any of the counties listed below, please lobby the indicated legislator (if you live in their district). Otherwise, please lobby the bill's author, Loni Hancock, as well as the five members of the Elections committee (especially the chair and the vice-chair).
Alameda -- Loni Hancock, or Wilma Chan* -- whichever one represents you.
Contra Costa -- Loni Hancock
Fresno -- Steven Samuelian**
Los Angeles -- State Senator Gil Cedillo*, and/or State Assemblymembers Jackie Goldberg*, Jerome Horton**, Lloyd Levine**, Alan Lowenthal*, and/or Tony Strickland** -- whichover one(s) represent you.
Madera -- Steven Samuelian**
Monterey -- John Laird*
Sacramento -- Darrell Steinberg*
San Bernardino -- John Longville**
San Francisco -- Mark Leno*
San Mateo -- Gene Mullin*
Santa Barbara -- Hannah-Beth Jackson*
Santa Clara -- John Laird*
Santa Cruz -- John Laird*
Ventura -- Hannah-Beth Jackson* or Tony Strickland** -- whichever one represents you.
* = AB 2949 co-author
** = Assembly Elections committee member
Contact information for the legislators
You can access contact info. for all 80 State Assembly members at:
http://www.assembly.ca.gov/acs/acsframeset7text.htm The five members of the Assembly Elections committee are listed at:
http://www.assembly.ca.gov/acs/newcomframeset.asp?committee=7 AB 2949 author Loni Hancock's contact info. is at:
http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a14/contact.htm (Her e-mail address is:
Assemblymember.hancock@assembly.ca.gov ).
You can access contact info. for all 40 State Senators at:
http://www.sen.ca.gov/~newsen/senators/senators.htp Information on AB 2949
To see the the current text of the bill, please go to:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=ab_2949&sess=CUR&house=A&author=hancock (Click on "HTML" or "PDF" for the text).
One of the worst provisions of the bill are sections 91023 and 9025. These sections would base political party qualification for public campaign financing on the percentage of vote that a party statewide candidate received in the LAST STATEWIDE ELECTION. So for the upcoming November elections, it would be based on last Fall's recall race (the last statewide election) -- so we would be shut out of participating! And for the 2006 elections, it would be based on this November's elections for President and U.S. Senate. (Since we don't have a Green candidate for U.S. Senate, and it's unlikely that our presidential candidate will get 3% to qualify us for partial financing (let alone 10% for full financing), we would again be shut out!).
Section 91089 gives the specific amounts available for each race. Please note that if our statewide candidate received 3% (but less than 10%) of the statewide vote, we could only qualify for 20% as much money as the Democrats or Republicans, for the primary election season, and in Section 91085, we would be shut out completely from any public funds (that Democrats and Republicans would receive) if a "non-participating" candidate "overspent" on the race!
The basic point is that we object to the discriminatory provisions in the bill, which create different TIERS of qualifying for funds, based on the percentage of vote the party received in the most recent statewide election. AB 2949 was supposed to have been modeled on the Arizona (and possibly the Maine) public finance laws -- but neither Arizona or Maine's laws discriminate against third parties -- there, ALL parties are treated completely equally! (Similar to AB 2949, the Arizona and Maine laws require candidates to get a certain number of $5 donations to qualify, but that's it! There is NOTHING in the Arizona and Maine laws regarding what percentage of the vote a party received in the last election!).
If our candidates get enough $5 donations to qualify, then we should receive the same amount of funding as any Democrat or Republican who qualifies -- we shouldn't be discriminated against based on what our statewide candidates received in the last statewide election, or the number of statewide registrations we have, or anything else! Equal funding for equal numbers of $5 donations!