Hillary Clinton joins Connecticut mom's push to use campaign funds for child care

March 27-- Mar. 27--A Connecticut mom's crusade to get the state to approve the use of campaign funds for child care expenses has drawn the attention of Hillary Clinton.

The 2016 presidential candidate and former secretary of state tweeted her support Wednesday for Caitlin Clarkson Pereira, the Fairfield woman who petitioned state election officials to be able to use both privately raised political contributions and public election grants for child care expenses.

Clarkson Pereira ran unsuccessfully for state representative in the 132nd House District in Fairfield in 2018.

Clinton's tweet had more than 16,000 "likes" as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.

The state Elections Enforcement Commission had been expected to rule last week that participants in the state's popular public campaign financing program could not use those funds to pay for child care, but could use privately-raised political contributions for that purpose.

A vote on the declaratory ruling has been delayed until April 3 to give the commission more time to deliberate, however.

Clarkson Pereira requested the ruling after a commission lawyer informally advised her she could not use public campaign funds to hire a babysitter for her daughter, Parker, who is now 4.

It's the part of a national debate whether child care expenses incurred by candidates can be paid for out of political coffers.

Massachusetts, West Virginia, Oakland, Calif., and Tucson, Ariz., ban the use of campaign grants for child care, while Maryland and Minnesota allow it.

In New York City, privately raised funds used toward qualifying for public campaign financing can be used for child care, but matching public grants cannot.

Clarkson Pereira received $28,150 from the voluntary Citizens' Election Program for her challenge to Republican state Rep. Brenda Kupchick. To qualify, she had to raise $5,100 from individual contributors in increments of no more than $250.

Neil Vigdor can be reached at nvigdor@courant.com

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