Updated January 5, 2007
Clean Elections candidates in three states-Arizona [0], Maine [0], and North Carolina [0]-have won 205 state offices in this year's elections. These new office holders include Democrats and Republicans, incumbents and challengers, women, and a diverse reflection of races and ethnicities.
http://azclean.org/documents/2006ElectionStatistics_000.PDF [1]
The 2006 elections were the second in which candidates for top judicial posts had the option to run using full public financing. Two-thirds of the candidates running for these seats, including five of the six winners, used the system this year.
- Three of the four seats up for election on the seven-member Supreme Court and both of the seats filled on the 15-member Court of Appeals will be held by judges who ran with public funding.
- Four of these publicly financed winners are women and one is an African American. Four are registered Democrats and one is a Republican (the elections are nonpartisan); one was a challenger, one won an open-seat race, and the other three were incumbents.
- Eight out of twelve candidates in the general elections used public funding. Another attempted to participate but failed to qualify.
- The only winner this year who was not in the program faced a privately financed opponent.
- Overall, 20 of the 28 candidates in the 2004 and 2006 general elections for the North Carolina Supreme Court and Court of Appeals have met the program's conditions and received "clean" public funds for their campaigns.
- Because of public financing, the campaigns in 2004 relied on attorneys and special-interest groups for less than 14 percent of their non-family funds, compared to 73 percent for candidates in 2002, before the reform.
- Thousands of registered voters-more than 4,000 in 2006-are providing the modest qualifying donations that authorize candidates to qualify for the public funds.
For more information, contact Nancy Watzman at Public Campaign, 303-329-8563. In Maine, contact Jon Bartholemew, Common Cause, 207-878-4126. In Arizona, contact Eric Ehst, Arizona Clean Elections Institute, 602-840-6633. In North Carolina, contact Bob Hall, Democracy North Carolina, 919-489-1931.