Anchorage Daily News

At least they won't be on the same ballot.

The Clean Elections Initiative, which Alaska voters will decide on in August, would provide public financing for state-level political candidates. The goal is to take the corrupting and limiting influence of big money out of campaigns, open elective office to more people and allow elected state officials to spend less time dialing for dollars and more time doing their jobs.

The Anti-Corruption Initiative, which Alaska voters would decide on in August 2010 if approved by the Division of Elections, would prohibit government contractors from contributing to political campaigns and hiring legislators or their staffers -- or even former legislators and aides who have been out of office less than two years.

No conflict there.

The rub is that the Anti-Corruption Initiative also prohibits spending any public money on any campaign, lobbying or partisan purpose.

That means no public financing for political candidates, no matter how fair the system.

That puts the Anti-Corruption Initiative squarely at odds with the Clean Elections Initiative, and that's a mistake.

"We just believe strongly that taxpayer dollars should not be spent ... for campaigning and lobbying," Bob Adney, executive director of the Committee to Stop the Corruption, says.

That suits the Libertarian, limited-government philosophy of many of the initiative's backers, including former state Rep. Dick Randolph. But it slams the door on a system that promises to pre-empt corruption by gutting special-interest influence over candidates, so they are beholden not to a few prime financial backers or industries but to all their constituents.

Alaskans should have no objections to the rest of the anti-corruption initiative. As Mr. Adney said, the goal is to "separate the relationship between government contractors and politicians." If we can break up the sometimes much-too-cozy relationship between lobbyists, lawmakers and certain industries in Alaska, we'll be better off.

An Anti-Corruption Initiative limited to those provisions would be well worth airing out. But Mr. Adney says it's unlikely his committee would change the ban on public financing even if voters approved public financing in 2008, because his group needs to keep faith with more than 36,000 petition signers.

We hope his committee is open to change, because the Clean Elections Initiative is well-vetted and based on successful public-financing programs in Arizona, Maine and other states. For candidates, it's a voluntary program that preserves the cherished Libertarian notion of individual choice. No candidate would be forced to accept public financing, but any candidate with at least a modest base of serious support could run on more than a shoestring and a prayer. That means voters would have a wider range of choices.

If Alaskans passed the Clean Elections Initiative in August 2008, they could find themselves being asked to repeal it in 2010 in the Anti-Corruption Initiative, before clean elections really had a chance to succeed or fail in Alaska.

That makes no sense.

The Clean Elections Initiative gives us a fighting chance to improve the way we do electoral business in Alaska. The Anti-Corruption Initiative's ban on public financing works against that. Come August, let's vote for the anti-corruption force of Clean Elections.

BOTTOM LINE: "Anti-corruption" initiative is only half-right. Clean Elections initiative is the way to go.

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