Supreme Court steps into Arizona's public financing law

By Robert Barnes

The Supreme Court on Tuesday stopped Arizona from distributing campaign subsidies to publicly funded candidates facing big-spending opponents.

The court granted a stay request from opponents of a decade-old law that subsidizes state candidates who agree to spend only public money on their campaigns. The high court will decide whether to review lower court decisions.

The subsidies are an attempt to blunt the influence of campaign contributors. In order to keep the publicly financed candidates from being roundly outspent, new subsidies are doled out according to the fundraising and spending of their privately financed opponents.

But those candidates, some of whom are self-financed, say the law forces them to limit their spending to avoid triggering more public money for their opponents.

A federal judge in Arizona said that made the law unconstitutional. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit disagreed, setting up the issue for the high court. Opponents of the law asked the court to stop the next round of public payments, which are scheduled for June 22, while deciding whether to hear the case.

A brief submitted by an intervener in the case, Clean Elections Institute, said disallowing the subsidies would "likely distort the outcome of the 2010 elections in Arizona."

As an example, it pointed to the governor's race. Gov. Jan Brewer (R), a publicly funded candidate, is eligible to receive more than $2.1 million under the current plan. "If matching funds were enjoined, that amount will drop by 66 percent to $707,447." Her privately financed GOP opponent Buz Mills, the brief said, already has spent nearly $2.3 million.

According to the court's order, the stay would dissolve if the court decided not to take the case. The decision on the stay, as is customary, came without explanation. There were no noted dissents.

