All of this may be true, but I'd like to see the public record where legislature took a look at the existing candidates for elected official, didn't like the results, and decided to raise salaries in order to improve the candidates.

My guess is that it didn't happen that way at all. Instead, the legislature voted to increase salaries for itself, and no one bothered to ask questions. Now we have retrospective justifications that it's hard so there were no candidates until salaries were raised, but I just don't see that happening anywhere.