I recently attend a candidate forum that included four candidates running for the 53rd Assembly District in California. The 53rd Assembly District is an open seat because of term limits. The event was well-organized with significant participation from the audience. The candidates did a good job of presenting their background, experiences, and their plan for the future of California. A member of the audience asked the question, “Do you accept contributions from corporations”. Three of the four candidates said no. It is not uncommon for candidates who are not incumbents to take this stand. Sometimes they take this stand because they and some times it is because the special interests only give to incumbents or candidates who already have significant money. Regardless of the candidate’s reason, the campaigns for major offices who are not funded by special interests are not competitive. The cost to hire enough staff and support a media effort to communicate a message across a major district is staggering. Part of the challenge is that we rely on traditional media to decide if a candidate is viable. When people are working very hard just to pay their bills, they do not have the time or energy to do research about their elected leaders. One of the candidates suggested that it is only a matter of time until a corporation runs for office. He suggested that we treat corporations as people based on a mid 1800s law and since the supreme court ruled this year that a corporation has freedom of speech rights and can spend as much as they like on political elections the next step is to cut out the middle man by running a corporation for office. The comments resulted in laughter, but there was a sense of truth in the room.
In my book, “Polly Dicta – Giving real democracy a voice”, I documented many cases where members of Congress accepted major campaign contributions from a specific organization and then the same member created or supported legislation that helped the same organization. It is clear Congress will not act to clean their own house because the members benefit the way things work now. We must act to carry out real change. Cosmetic changes like ethics rules or laws will not change the process because dishonest people will always find ways around ethics laws when they are the ones who write the laws. We must have a fundamental change to the way we finance campaigns to bring true transparency to our government. We must elect honest people but we do not know who is honest when the process to elect our leaders encourages candidates to put the interests of organizations ahead of the interests of the people who elect them.
The states of Arizona and Maine have proven that the people can carry out change and clean up the way we elect our leaders. We must start “Clean Money Campaigns” through a grassroots effort. The Internet gives us the vehicle, we must use portals like Polly Dicta to give real democracy a voice. We must let our leaders know that we are establishing the agenda for America and support change or we will find someone who will. We must make this effort in every Congressional District. Until the leaders understand they can lose their job, we will not experience real change and we will not advance the economy, healthcare, the environment, or dependence on foreign oil if our interests threaten the interests of big money. Encourage as many people as possible to go to the Polly Dicta website and register as a subscriber. We must work together to let our leaders know we will no longer allow them to sacrifice us for the interests of powerful organizations.
