By Neha Sud '05

David Donnelly '91 who has helped lead the fight for Clean Election funding in Massachusetts

"Sisyphus," said David Donnelly '91, "that's who I feel like these days."

A political activist and director of the 6,000-member Massachusetts Voters for Clean Elections, Donnelly and the organization he leads have targeted Massachusetts legislators who, they say, are incumbent politicians resisting an election reform that would reduce their power and give money to their prospective opponents.

"People with political power don't like to give it up," Donnelly said. "We're not shrinking violets either." The activists have engaged in civil disobedience, shut down the governor's office and gone as far as selling state-owned cars and furniture (per order of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court) to fund the group's election reform initiative.

A government major at Colby, Donnelly entered politics on Congressman Tom Andrews's campaign for one of Maine's U.S. Senate seats. Donnelly maintains that Andrews was "an incredible leader" who lost simply because he did not have enough money to make a successful run for the Senate.

"I realized that there were some fundamental problems in American politics," Donnelly said, most of them stemming from the amount of money it takes to run for office and where that money comes from. "It was an issue central to how poorly our democracy functioned." Andrews's defeat inspired Donnelly to become an advocate for the clean elections law.

Enacted in four states so far, clean election laws stipulate that if candidates manage to gather a certain amount of public support and agree to spending limits, they qualify for full public funding to cover campaign expenses. The idea is to minimize the influence of special interest groups in politics and encourage more people to vie for public office. With Donnelly working on its behalf, the law was passed in Maine in 1996. He then moved on to Massachusetts, where another clean elections campaign was in progress. Endorsed by the entire Massachusetts congressional delegation, the clean elections law passed in 1998 by a 2-1 margin. The events that followed almost caused a constitutional crisis.

Massachusetts legislators argued that public funding of political campaigns is a frivolous use of tax dollars and refused to release the clean election funds. Massachusetts Voters for Clean Elections disputed the legislators' claim that clean elections are a drain on the budget. "The state budget is $23 billion," Donnelly pointed out. "Clean elections will cost about $10 million, a small fraction, and should come from general revenues just like any other necessary and important state program."

Outraged that the legislature could ignore the will of 1.1 million voters who supported the law, Donnelly and his colleagues took the case to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. In January the court ruled in favor of election reformers and ordered that the legislature either fund the law or repeal it. The legislature did neither.

In April Justice Martha B. Sosman concluded that the lawmakers had "chosen to respond to this Œconstitutional crisis' with brinksmanship rather than statesmanship" and ruled that supporters of the law could auction off state property to fund qualified candidates.

Donnelly and other advocates began selling state-owned surplus properties and vehicles that the Commonwealth was going to sell anyway. They even attempted to confiscate furniture from legislative offices. "We were seeking to minimize the damage to the taxpayers because they had already been harmed enough by the legislature," Donnelly said. "Still, there's no way to completely eliminate the damage."

Inevitably, this unorthodox fund raising turned into a media circus. Political wags dubbed Massachusetts the "eBay state." Legislators finally acquiesced and in June agreed to release $9.6 million required to fund clean elections this year‹under one condition. This fall a referendum question will go to the voters asking if they "support taxpayer money being used to fund political campaigns."

Given that wording, it appears unlikely that the public will approve. In January, when the Boston Globe asked voters if they thought the "clean elections law" should be funded, a majority of those polled said yes. When the Boston Herald asked voters if they supported the use of "taxpayer money to fund political campaigns," 55 percent said no.

In the meantime, Donnelly plans to keep up the pressure on the legislature. With some 60 to 70 members of the 150-member House in support of his cause, he says, the likelihood is that in the 2003 elections at least 15-20 additional legislators who support clean elections will take House seats.

Donnelly says he's motivated in his struggle against the "anti-democratic forces" of special interest groups by his children, Andrew, 4, and Rachel, 2. "Our kids deserve better from the government and what it provides its citizens," he said. "They certainly deserve an opportunity to have a democracy that is free of the taint of special-interest money."