OXFORD — Incumbents in political races, unless they earn the enmity of well-financed special interest groups or just take too many unpopular stands, generally have the advantage in elections.
They have name recognition, get a lot of public exposure by being invited to speak at civic clubs and showing up at other public events, and — as has been recently widely reported — most of them at the state level and in the Mississippi Legislature have a bank account fattened by campaign contributions.
Now members of the Legislature have just passed a bill giving themselves a little more advantage in warding off competition by increasing filing fees for candidates running for office.
Senate Bill 2167, which both branches of the Legislature have passed, would require independent candidates to start paying qualifying fees and increase the fees party candidates already pay.
Candidates for governor would pay $1,000, up from the current $500. Candidates for state senator and state representative would pay $250, up from the current $15. Independent candidates would pay the secretary of state and party candidates would pay their party.
Rep. Cory Wilson, a Madison Republican, says the bill would raise money for elections operations.
It wouldn’t raise much in the overall scheme of things, certainly not enough to pay for conducting an election. What it would do — and what we suspect was behind it more than fundraising — is reduce the number of candidates, especially some of those perennials who throw their hats into the ring every election cycle with virtually no chance of winning.
But in America, anyone, serious or not, who meets the qualifications should be able to run for public office without having to pay more than a nominal fee to get on the ballot.
Representatives and senators who voted for the bill could argue that they, too, will have to pay it when they run for re-election. But $250 is easier to come up with if you have more than $100,000 in a campaign war chest.
Gov. Phil Bryant should veto this bill. We need more candidates, not less.
UPDATE: Senate Bill 2167, referred to in this column, was signed into law by Gov. Phil Bryant on Wednesday, April 6. The law takes effect on July 1, 2016.
Dunagin, who lives in Oxford, is a retired longtime Mississippi newspaperman.
