FRANKFORT — Senate Republicans, looking ahead to the 2003 governor's race, Wednesday kept hammering at the state's system of partial public campaign financing.

        Throughout a hearing by the Senate budget committee, Republicans pressed two arguments. They said the system's spending limit is too low for a candidate who needs name recognition. Yet, its overall cost is theoretically unlimited because the cap comes off if someone running a self-financed campaign goes beyond the limit.

Kelly

        “It is foreseeable that somebody will pull the trigger and all bets are off ... and we have this unlimited potential raid on the treasury,” Sen. Dan Kelly, the chamber's majority leader, said during the hearing.

        On the Senate floor, Mr. Kelly mounted a third line of attack, reading a stack of messages from callers who expressed surprise, even outrage, at learning that tax dollars are offered as matching funds to candidate slates that agree to abide by spending limits.

        The General Assembly ended its annual session last week without enacting a budget after Senate Republicans would not agree to appropriate $9 million for campaign financing, as Gov. Paul Patton proposed and the House approved. Mr. Patton summoned lawmakers back on Monday to give the budget another try.

        Public campaign financing, enacted in 1992, actually has been used but once — the 1995 governor's race in which Mr. Patton defeated Republican Larry Forgy. Mr. Patton had no mainstream Republican opposition for re-election in 1999.

        A candidate slate for governor and lieutenant governor that raises a prescribed amount of money will be given $2 in public funds for every $1 raised.

        The threshold is adjusted for inflation. The minimum to qualify is expected to be $355,000 next year, with the maximum at $710,000, Sarah Jackson, executive director of the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance, told the Appropriations and Revenue Committee. With matching money, the slate would have a treasury of $1.06 million to $2.13 million.

        But it gets more complicated. The match applies in each election — primary and general. At least two slates must qualify, or no one gets matching money. In the event of a primary runoff, each slate would get a flat $354,000.
       

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