The Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Act

In 1998, Arizona voters approved the Citizens Clean Elections Act, which established a system of full public financing for candidates for statewide and state legislative offices. The new law went into effect for the 2000 elections, and the first gubernatorial race under the new system took place in 2002.

The Clean Elections law is designed to enable qualified candidates to launch competitive campaigns without having to raise their campaign money from high dollar donors who often expect legislative or regulatory favors or access in return. Candidates are able to spend their time on the campaign trail talking to constituents, rather than worrying about their next big dollar fundraiser.

Under the system, candidates who wish to participate must raise a set number—the number varies by office—of $5 contributions from Arizona residents. In this “qualifying” period, they may also use a small, set amount of their own money and a limited amount of “seed money” from private donors to help them launch their efforts.[4] Once candidates collect their qualifying $5 contributions, they receive a grant to run their campaign, provided they agree to abide by strict spending limits and to raise no more private money. If they are outspent by a privately funded opponent, they may receive additional public funds, sometimes referred to as “fair fight funds,” to run a competitive campaign.

Source: Citizens Clean Elections Commission, Arizona Clean Elections Institute

In the four election cycles it has been in place, the Arizona Clean Elections system has proven robust. Currently 42 percent of the legislature and nine out of 11 statewide officials ran using the system. Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) ran using the system for both her 2002 and 2006 races. In her most recent general election race, she faced an opponent, Len Munsil, who also ran with a Clean Elections grant. The Republican primary also featured another Clean Elections gubernatorial candidate, Don Goldwater.

Clean Elections has opened up elections in Arizona to diverse candidates. Women use the system at higher rates than men do. In the 2006 primary elections, 69 percent of women ran as Clean Elections candidates versus 52 percent of male candidates. Of those who won office, 62 percent of women ran under the Clean Elections system versus 36 percent of men. Of the 34 women who won office in 2006, 21 ran as Clean Elections candidates, including 18 of 31 legislators and all three statewide officers (governor, secretary of state, and corporation commissioner).[5]

Overall, in Arizona, candidates who are members of racial and ethnic minorities, who often do not have access to the same private sources of campaign funding that non-Hispanic white candidates do, rely on Clean Elections grants in statewide races. Since the implementation of the system in Arizona, five of the six minority candidates for statewide office have participated in the system.[6]

Who Are the Small Donors?

By definition, Arizona’s Clean Elections program enhances the power of small donors. They are crucial to participating candidates’ campaigns because they are the means by which candidates qualify for public funding. The Arizona Clean Elections system, however, also provides the perfect opportunity to explore the nature of small donors—and why it’s important to increase their participation in elections. Who are they? Where do they live? Are they demographically different from big dollar donors to campaigns?

To answer these questions, we concentrated on Arizona’s gubernatorial races in 2002 and 2006. Because the gubernatorial races are statewide, they provide a greater range of information for demographic analysis than state legislative races would. We obtained records of $5 qualifying contributions to the nine gubernatorial campaigns that qualified for Clean Elections funding: Janet Napolitano (2002 and 2006); Len Munsil (2006); 2002 primary candidates Betsey Bayless (R), Alfredo Gutierrez (D), Richard Mahoney (I), Mark Osterloh (D), Carol Springer (R); and 2006 primary candidate Don Goldwater.

To establish points of comparison, we included two sets of data on privately funded campaigns. One set is the individual contributions to Matt Salmon (R),[7] who ran a privately funded campaign in the general election against Napolitano in 2002. In 2006 both major party general election candidates participated in Clean Elections, offering no privately funded candidate to study for comparison purposes.[8] So we included the next best thing: the large individual ($200+) contributions to Arizona’s two 2006 U.S. Senate candidates: Sen. Jon Kyl (R) and Jim Pederson (D). Though not an exact “apples-to-apples” comparison, these statewide U.S. Senate races provide an indication of where privately funded candidates raised their money that year.[9]

We then compared totals raised by zip code by Clean Elections candidates versus privately funded candidates with data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In doing this, we were able to get a picture ofhow Clean Elections $5 donors differed from big donors to privately funded campaigns economically, racially/ethnically, and geographically. (Please see the Methodology section for more information.)

[4] For 2006 gubernatorial campaigns, the self-funding limit was $1,160 and the seed money limit was $46,440 (restricted to no more than $120/contributor). Together this represents less than five percent of the standard public financing grant for primary and general elections.
[5] Arizona Clean Elections Institute, communication with Eric Ehst, executive director.
[6] Arizona Clean Elections Institute, based on analysis of data from the Arizona Secretary of State office.
[7] Under Arizona law, privately funded candidates raising more than $500 must itemize all contributions of more than $25 to their campaigns.
[8] While there were several privately funded candidates in the GOP primary, they raised so little money overall that including their data would skew the analysis.
[9]Ninety-one percent of the individual contributions collected by these two U.S. Senate candidates came in the form of $200+ donations, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.