By Jeremy Duda | Arizona Capitol Times
With each election cycle since the end of matching funds, Clean Elections has become an exceedingly less potent force, a trend that led to near-record lows in both participation and success in Arizona’s public campaign funding system.
In 2014, Clean Elections had its second-worst cycle in terms of both total participation by candidates and the success of those who ran with public funding.
According to an analysis by the Arizona Capitol Times, only 32 percent of statewide and legislative candidates – 70 of 219 – ran with public funding, the lowest percentage since the 26.3 percent in 2000, the first year in which Clean Elections funding was available.
And of those who ran with Clean Elections funding, only 16 of 98 winning candidates, or 16.3 percent, used public funding. Again, the only year with a lower percentage of winning candidates using Clean Elections was 2000, when 13 percent of successful candidates ran publicly funded campaigns.
