Bill allowing child care as a campaign expense advances

Caitlin Clarkson Pereira, a former candidate from Fairfield for the state House of Representatives, drew national attention when, in 2019, she filed a lawsuit to make child care an allowable expense in Connecticut’s publicly financed campaigns.

Pereira lost her race but won her lawsuit against the State Elections Enforcement Commission, which had turned down her request. Still, she and her supporters, including Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, said the judge’s ruling should be codified into law.

This week, the General Assembly’s Government Administration and Elections Committee moved to do that, advancing a bill that would allow candidates to spend public campaign money on child care costs directly related to campaign activity by a vote of 15-3.

In 2018, when Pereira, a Fairfield Democrat, ran against Republican state Rep. Brenda Kupchick, she went to the State Elections Enforcement Commission, known as SEEC, for a declaratory ruling on whether public funds she received from the voluntary Citizens’ Election Program could be used to pay for child care for her daughter, Parker, who was 3 at the time. That would allow her to hit the campaign trail, she argued, so it should be a campaign expense.

The all-male commission said state law did not allow it. But the commission offered to work with the legislature to change the state’s campaign finance laws.

The debate over the bill comes as responses to the coronavirus pandemic at both the state and federal levels have focused on funding for child care as way to help women and working mothers.

“Access to affordable and quality child care is critical to gender equity and has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Nicole Sanclemente, policy and program associate for the Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund, said in submitted testimony. “Women, especially women of color, continue to shoulder the majority of the caregiving responsibilities of their families, including child care and elder care.”

The issue grabbed the attention of former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who tweeted her support in April 2019, and Ellen Weintraub, then the chair of the Federal Elections Commission.

Pereira appealed the SEEC’s ruling and won. A Connecticut Superior Court judge ruled in her favor last August, stating that candidates for political office in Connecticut can use public campaign funds to reimburse child care expenses as long as they are the “direct result of campaign activity,” that they are “reasonable and customary for the services rendered” and are “properly documented by the campaign.”

The bill advanced by the elections committee, which could now be taken up by the full General Assembly, would establish an age and spending limit for eligible child care expenses.

The proposal would apply to “any child who is under thirteen years of age and for whom such candidate is the parent or legal guardian, which services are necessary as a direct result of campaign activity that would not exist but for such candidate’s campaign,” and would limit spending to $2,000 for a candidate for state Senate and $1,000 for a state House candidate.

Bysiewicz, who chairs the Governor’s Council on Women and Girls, has said child care continues to be a barrier for women running for office, especially lowincome mothers who can’t afford outside help.

The proposal was included in a legislative package pushed for by the council, which has the support of Gov. Ned Lamont.