LOD: Serving the Public

So who do you want your Insurance Commissioner listening to when it comes time to regulate insurance rates? The public or the insurance companies? If the private companies supply the bulk of the commissioner’s campaign money, you can bet they’ll have an insider’s advantage. That’s one powerful reason why we need the Voter-Owned Elections program for NC Insurance Commissioner to continue. It gives candidates for the office an option: They can reject special-interest money, raise hundreds of small donations from voters, and earn access to a public campaign fund that allows them to stay loyal to the public interest. In 2008, the program meant that the Democratic and Republican candidates for IC raised only 5% of their total campaign funds from donors tied to industries regulated by the office; that’s an amazing drop from the 66% supplied by special interests in 2004 before the VOE program began. Unfortunately, legislative leaders are draining the VOE program of its money and pushing IC candidates onto “the money train,” as Common Cause’s Bob Phillips calls it in this article today about Commissioner Wayne Goodwin’s current fundraising travels. If people don’t like their local, state and federal candidates chasing the private dollars, they need to give them a meaningful public funding option. The payoff is huge: In 2009, Goodwin fought the auto insurance industry’s rate increase and eventually won a settlement that returned $102 to the average auto owner and cut the rate hike by $50 million a year.