Decker affair should not affect campaign finance

The guilty plea of former state Rep. Michael Decker and ongoing investigation into House Speaker Jim Black is sure to bring out more calls for taxpayers to finance legislative campaigns.

Decker, a Forsyth County Republican whose switch to the Democratic Party in January 2003 helped set the stage for a co-speakership between Black and Republican Richard Morgan, pleaded guilty this week to charges he accepted $50,000 for switching parties and voting for a Democratic speaker.

Black, through his attorneys, insists that he has done nothing illegal. No charges have been brought against the Mecklenburg County Democrat.

Backers of taxpayer financed campaigns - or, as it's often called, public financing - will use any excuse to promote their cause. Earlier this year, they tried to use the ethical cloud engulfing the General Assembly to start a pilot program for such financing.

Fortunately, it didn't happen.

Tax-paid campaigns are a bad idea for a number of reasons: Taxes are supposed to pay for legitimate government functions. Running elections is a legitimate function of government. Running campaigns is not.

Taking money from the general population to finance the political class is sort of like a Robin Hood in reverse scheme. Most of the people getting elected to the General Assembly are far better off financially than the average taxpayer. Why should people struggling to make ends meet be forced to pay for the activities of the more affluent?

Such financing schemes generally serve to protect incumbents. It would be more difficult for lesser-known challengers to win if they weren't allowed to spend more money than the incumbents.

Gerrymandered districts make such financing unfair. Republicans generally need to spend more money than their Democratic opponents to win elections in Democratic districts, and vice versa. Rules for tax-paid financing usually require an equal amount of money to be spent on campaigns.

It's patently wrong to force citizens to support speech and ideas that they may disagree with.

Our nation was founded on the principle of free speech. Forcing people to support a candidate's ideas breaches that principle.

Supporters of campaign finance changes argue that such changes are necessary to get a lot of big, dirty money out of politics. But tax-paid financing doesn't have such a good record of doing that.

Presidential campaigns, for decades, have had tax-paid financing in place. And big money continues to play a role in those campaigns.

With such a poor track record, the idea of taxpaid campaigns should be eliminated before it is allowed to take root.