They spoke for a total of only six minutes on the House floor Tuesday, but four legislators managed to hit the high notes from years of debate about one of the most important proposed reforms needed at all levels of Hawaiʻi government.

At issue was House Bill 370, one of three measures still alive to resuscitate Hawaiʻi’s woefully underfunded public campaign finance program.

The three key points addressed Tuesday were familiar:

— Supporters said a higher level of public financing is essential to encourage more candidates to run for office and actually give them a chance to win.

— Opponents said taxpayers should never be forced to help candidates who they don’t agree with.

— One legislator reminded her colleagues that the issue of whether to have a system of public campaign finance was actually decided 47 years ago when voters made it part of the state constitution. The question now is whether to make it viable again.

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Giving Challengers A Fighting Chance

Increasing the public campaign finance option is often pointed to as a way to address a fact of political life in Hawaiʻi: Because of their name familiarity and their ability to fundraise, incumbents usually win when they seek reelection.

So it was ironic that this point was being made Tuesday by a high-profile exception to that trend, Rep. Kim Coco Iwamoto, who ousted House Speaker Scott Saiki last November.

“One in four voters live in a secure building or gated community that makes low-cost door-knocking impossible,” Iwamoto said. “No matter how earnest the candidate may be, this free personal delivery of their qualifications will never make it across that abyss. Even just sending mailers to all registered voters in a district can cost $7,000 for printing and postage.”

“Should we tell the economically disadvantaged candidates that there is no path forward for them?” Iwamoto asked her colleagues. “Think about the billions of taxpayer dollars that we allocate. This bill invests a minuscule fraction to ensure we have the broadest economic diversity participating in those decisions.”

It was a fresh take on a concept endorsed by numerous good-government groups as a way to increase voter turnout and reduce the corruption inherent in a system in which officeholders are beholden to their financial supporters.

For years, large majorities of candidates who respond to Civil Beat’s Q&A surveys have voiced support for strengthening the public finance system so it can provide a more attractive option for candidates who are willing to limit their spending.

Nobody is forced to accept public funding and the resulting restrictions on overall expenditures. Those who do still have to earn their eligibility for public money by first demonstrating they can generate some level of financial support through small donations.

Opposition From Both Sides Of The Aisle

Two GOP legislators — and one founding father — spoke out against the bill Tuesday on the House floor.

“Many individuals testified in opposition to this measure because they don’t want their tax dollars paying for a candidate who does not represent their beliefs or even live in their district,” said Rep. Christopher Muraoka.

Rep. Diamond Garcia let Thomas Jefferson do the talking, sort of, by paraphrasing a 1786 statement from the man who would become the nation’s third president:

“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions for which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

The author of the two bills still alive in the Senate to expand public campaign finance doesn’t buy this often-heard line of opposition.

“I pay taxes on all kinds of stuff that I either a) will never use, or b) don’t agree with,” Sen. Karl Rhoads said this week.

It’s not only Republican lawmakers who oppose strengthening the public campaign finance system. Considering their minority status and how hard it is for a Republican to win election in deep blue Hawaiʻi they might actually stand to benefit.

That’s what Democrat Nadine Nakamura, now the House speaker, argued before the 2023 session in voicing her opposition to a measure calling for full public campaign financing. Why help out the GOP? was the basis of her stand.

Rhoads doesn’t agree with her either, arguing that in Hawaiʻi Democrats are better than Republicans at the kind of grassroots fundraising required to qualify for for public financing.

The bottom line, of course, is that when we’re evaluating a government reform proposal, it shouldn’t matter which political party would benefit more.

Shrinking Impact Of Public Campaign Finance

Hawaiʻi already has a public campaign financing option because voters wanted one. They approved a constitutional amendment to create it in 1978, Rep. Della Au Belatti said Tuesday by way of a history lesson for House members.

“In the years that followed, public funding of elections played a meaningful role in major races up and down the ballot in Hawaiʻi’s local elections,” Belatti said.

The halcyon days of public finance were detailed in a 2023 University of Hawaiʻi report that noted its significance in some of the gubernatorial campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s. In 1998 alone, 49 candidates used the program statewide.

But times changed. Campaigns got more expensive and public finance levels stayed the same. Last year, only 10 candidates used public financing.

“The level of public funding is far too low, particularly for the legislative races where it could really make a difference,” political scientist Colin Moore wrote in the UH report.

The last high-profile candidate to obtain public campaign financing was David Ige back in 2014, when he knocked off incumbent Gov. Neil Abercrombie despite being outspent 10-1.

What people may forget is that despite running such a low-budget campaign in the Democratic primary, Ige didn’t qualify for public financing until the general election.

The former governor took a break from his yard work this week to explain that his 2014 campaign was tripped up by the requirement that it receive 1,000 contributions of $100 or less.

“We knew that we wouldn’t exceed the expenditure limit, but the challenge was trying to get that many small contributions and keep track of them,” Ige said.

“We tried to qualify, and we didn’t get to that level till right before the primary. We did the paperwork, but did not receive the funds (about $100,000) until after the primary.”

HB 370 doesn’t make it any easier for gubernatorial candidates to qualify for public financing, but presumably would make it more worth their while.

These Bills Are Shooting Some Blanks

The word “presumably” in that previous sentence refers to the fact that House committees blanked out the dollar figures for how much public funding candidates could receive before sending HB 370 to the Senate.

This makes it difficult to compare this bill to the two public campaign finance measures that the Senate just sent to the House.

What can be said is that, based on the dollars in the measures before any blanking out occurred, HB 370 is a modest increase in partial public campaign funding, Senate Bill 345 is a partial increase on steroids and Senate Bill 51 is the full meal deal — considered “full” public campaign finance.

For example, in state Senate District 1, a fully eligible candidate who faced competitive primary and general election opponents would currently be eligible for maximum public assistance of $14,538. Under HB 370 (before the blanks) that rises to $21,806, under SB 345 it jumps to $77,923 and under SB 51, $100,000.

There are all kinds of other variables, such as eligibility requirements, matching fund ratios and how much to increase the Hawaiʻi Election Campaign Fund to cover the outlays.

That fund currently contains just $2.2 million, which is just fine when hardly anyone uses it but way too small to accommodate the additional demands that these bills would probably produce. The full public financing measure would require that the fund rise to about $30 million before it took effect for the 2028 election season.

None of this would be cheap, but as supporters like to point out, the cost of enhanced public campaign finance is a tiny fraction of the cost of governing the islands.

If it led to state and county governments that are significantly less beholden to special interests, it could be money well spent.