Does Public Financing Encourage Political Polarization?

The LA Times today reports that the Arizona Clean Elections Act, which the Supreme Court last week held unconstitutional, worked in practice primarily to benefit grass-roots, insurgent conservative candidates. Laws like this might in general tend to benefit grass-roots candidates, at least in lower cost elections, like state legislative races; in largely conservative states, like AZ, that will mean grass-roots conservatives, while in largely liberal states, that will mean grass-roots liberals. Does this dynamic then mean, ironically, that public financing encourages greater political polarization, as seems to have been the case in AZ? Perhaps that's the reason Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who understands AZ politics on the ground, has (surprisingly to many) opposed the AZ public financing laws.

Here's an excerpt from the LA Times article:

One of the architects of the conservative lock on the Arizona statehouse is political consultant Constantin Querard. Over the last decade, Querard recruited grass-roots conservatives to challenge established incumbents. The key, he said, was the Clean Elections Act.

"The average conservative, the person who was interested in limited government, did not have a Rolodex that allowed them to go out and raise $30,000, $40,000," Querard said.

Querard stumbled on the solution in 2002, when a legislative seat opened in a solidly Republican Phoenix-area district. He viewed all the candidates in the GOP primary as too liberal. Three weeks before the filing deadline, he persuaded a homemaker named Colette Rosati to run, reassuring her that she would get state money if she rounded up enough backers. She won the primary, and an Assembly seat.

"If you can get a conservative competitive money against a liberal, the conservative wins," Querard said. "The conservatives who don't like Clean Elections love the Legislature Clean Elections gave them."