At this writing, the general election campaign for governor has just gotten underway, and it’s looking like a barn-burner. And with the first post-primary poll putting the race at a statistical tie, it’s going to be quite a sprint to the finish.

But it’s not too early to be disappointed by the election of 2002, and worried by what it means for civic life in the Commonwealth. Despite the life a wide-open race for governor has breathed into state politics, the 2002 campaign season has been marked by opportunities squandered and innovations more unnerving than inspiring. If states are laboratories of democracy, in this election, the Bay State would seem to be run by a mad scientist.

Chief among the opportunities squandered is the public campaign-financing scheme known as Clean Elections. Contrary to the finger-wagging at the end of the Democratic primary campaign, the letdown here was not Warren Tolman’s failure to match his holier-than-thou rhetoric with high-minded campaign ads. Tolman may have miscalculated his appeals, but he was under no obligation to make his campaign “worthy” of the public funds he qualified for under the law. (More disappointing to me is that, with the means to broadcast his message that free cash gave him, the best platform he could come up with was his bald pate.) Rather, what was lost as a result of the funding standoff was the chance to put Clean Elections to the test.

Now, there is considerable skepticism here about how much Clean Elections would have cleansed Massachusetts politics. In 1998, when the campaign-finance question was on the ballot, this space (then the voice of my predecessor, CommonWealth founding editor Dave Denison) raised numerous questions about the central premise of the proposal: that money is the root of all evil in state politics.

“What is the evidence the clean elections law is attacking the right problem in this state?” Denison asked, noting that there seemed to be little correlation between past campaign-finance reforms and the influence of corporate interests in state policy. Even when big money got its way– such as tax breaks for the likes of Raytheon Corp. and Fidelity Investments– it was based on persuasive, if controversial, public-policy appeals. He allowed that the “arrogance” of Beacon Hill leaders seemed to play into the public’s worst suspicions about politicians but suggested that Clean Elections could solve that problem “only in the most theoretical, somewhere-down-the-road way.”

Dave’s bottom line came to this: “My own suspicion is that the clean elections law…won’t make much difference in Massachusetts politics.” The tragedy of this year’s funding fiasco is we’ll never know how much of a difference this reform might have made, either in the already spirited contest for the state’s top offices or in the exercise in electoral somnabulence that will return most lawmakers to Beacon Hill without challenge.

What we do know is, in the absence (or just marginal presence) of public financing, this year’s election for statewide office has been more about money than ever. Indeed, by primary day the candidates had spent roughly $20 million– more than was shelled out during the entire 1998 gubernatorial campaign, $18.6 million, which was itself a record. Not only that, it’s been increasingly about the candidates’ own money. Here and elsewhere, the biggest source of “clean” money — that is, untainted by special interest– this year has been the candidates’ bank accounts.

In California, Republican Bill Simon spent $5 million out of his own pocket to win his party’s nomination, and has lent his campaign another $4 million to keep his candidacy against Gov. Gray Davis alive. In the New Hampshire governor’s race, Republican nominee Craig Benson put $9 million into the primary alone, outbidding rivals Gordon Humphrey, who pumped $4 million into his campaign, and Bruce Keough, $2 million of his personal funds (I must be descended from the wrong Keoughs). In Rhode Island, former state Sen. Myrth York spent $2.2 million out of her own pocket to win the Democratic nomination for governor (for the third time), defeating Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse, who put up $650,000 of the $2.1 million he spent overall; on the Republican side, Donald Carcieri, a retired CEO, coughed up $1 million to secure his party’s nomination. Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez has plans to spend up to $70 million of his oil money in his challenge to Republican Gov. Rick Perry. In New York, it’s the conservative Independent Party candidate, Thomas Golisano, who’s digging into his very deep pockets; he’s now on track to spend $75 million of his Paychex fortune in pursuit of the governor’s office against incumbent Republican George Pataki and Democrat Carl McCall. In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has extended checkbook politics into governance, not only financing his campaign for office earlier this year but personally guaranteeing the city’s $75 million bid for the 2004 Democratic Party national convention.

In Massachusetts, we’re hip-deep into this privatization of politics as well. Democratic lieutenant-governor candidate Chris Gabrieli, whose civic generosity extends to this magazine, sank $3.5 million of his own money into the primary campaign (which included sharing the cost of commercials that he appeared in with gubernatorial candidate Shannon O’Brien), and much more could be coming. But Gabrieli is not the only candidate who has opened up his substantial wallet. By mid-September, Republican gubernatorial candidate Mitt Romney put $3 million into his own campaign, while his running mate, Kerry Healey, ponied up $1.5 million and her failed rival, Jim Rappaport, $1.9 million.

Less noted, but no less noteworthy, was Democratic hopeful Robert Reich’s decision not to pump up, or bail out, his cash-strapped campaign himself– another example of a campaign’s prospects turning on questions of personal finance. We’ll never know how far Reich– the most made-for-television of the four Democratic contenders– would have gone had he written a check down the homestretch, let alone tapped the Clean Elections fund, as he had planned to do before the Legislature balked.

Finally, we’ll never know whether the spending disincentives built into the campaign-finance law would have put the brakes on spending by these checkbook candidates. With every dollar spent by privately funded candidates above pre-set limits translating into another public dollar in the campaign account of their Clean Elections rivals, even the most well-heeled candidates would have had reason to back off the political bidding war. (Tolman, the lone publicly funded candidate, was too much the underdog to wag the dog this way.) Whether they would have, we’ll never know.

In Massachusetts, especially, it didn’t have to be this way, not this year. We know that because that’s not the way it’s happening in Arizona– a state that, like us, has on the books a Clean Elections campaign-finance system, but one that has actually been allowed to work. The Democratic nominee for governor, Attorney General Janet Napolitano, is publicly funded, as is independent Richard Mahoney. An early poll shows Napolitano neck-and-neck with former US Rep. Matt Salmon, the Republican nominee, who’s funded with private contributions. That gives Napolitano an even chance (or almost even, given the Republican tilt in that state) to become the first governor in the nation to be elected without dunning donors. And, since all candidates for these offices are running with public funds, Arizona is assured of having a Clean Elections attorney general, secretary of state, state treasurer, and mine inspector come January no matter who wins.

In Maine, another Clean Elections state, public financing hasn’t caught on the same way at the top of the ticket; only Green Party gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Carter is campaigning on the public dole. But 62 percent of candidates for the Maine Legislature are running on public campaign funding. Likewise, in Arizona, 117 out of 208 candidates for legislative seats, or 57 percent, have opted into Clean Elections.

More important, in the legislative races, is the increase in electoral competition. In Arizona, for instance, the number of candidates competing in the primary election this year was up 23 percent compared to 1998, the last non-Clean Elections year there. That state’s 30 legislative districts (each represented by one senator and two representatives) are notoriously skewed toward one party or the other, making the primary often tantamount to election. But this year, 13 of Arizona’s 15 heavily Republican districts had contested primaries for House seats (seven state Senate primaries were competitive), and seven of 10 Democratic districts saw competition for the House (four for Senate). It’s a lesson of particular relevance for Massachusetts, where both parties fielded candidates in only 31 percent of House districts this year (second worst in the nation; see “State of the States,” page 30) and 12 of 40 state Senate races, and where primary challenges are rare unless the seats are open.

That’s not to say that Clean Elections has revolutionized Arizona or Maine politics. But it shouldn’t be expected to. As my predecessor suggested four years ago, Clean Elections advocates, including candidate Tolman, tend to oversell the reform, suggesting that taking the fundraising out of politics will make candidates (and their campaigns) pure as the driven snow, immune from the influence of “special interests.” It won’t. But my view is that it could draw into the political arena candidates who lack the talent or the stomach for solicitation (or their own bulging bank accounts) but are willing to have their other talents and their points-of-view judged against those who do.

Now, there would still remain the question– posed sharply, if self-servingly, by Speaker Finneran and by the stark realities of this year’s budget crisis– of whether this effect on Massachusetts democracy would be worth the price. Alas, after this year’s botching of the Clean Elections experiment, we are still waiting to find out.