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Is That My Hobby Horse?
Given that candidates don't actually get to do anything other than raise money if they have any interest in winning, I think the introduction of the Durbin-Tierney public financing proposal is very promising. I still need to look at the legislation itself, but so far it looks pretty much on target. I wonder whether they can get any real momentum behind it. Surely those members of Congress get tired of having to raise money all the time!
By the way, I can't remember the last time I read an article quite so trivial and demeaning.
2 Comments:
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Huh. This looks good. My only question (and it's an honest question, I don't have time to do the research right now) is how likely it will be that Congressional candidates will forego public funding. Or will it even change the composition of Congress, making it more likely that self-funded, very wealthy politicians will run? I honestly don't know how much money candidates currently raise for campaigns, so it's hard to judge the numbers that are cited on the Fair Elections website. But in any case, thanks for passing this on.
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kermitthefrog, at 4:24 PM
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I don't think that most candidates will forego public financing. I can speak from direct experience that members of congress detest raising money. They have to start fundraising the moment they get elected. Any candidate without a million in the bank is a target. That's 10,000 a week. Crazy.
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I think that a public financing system will make the most difference in marginal districts and in open seats. And the system is designed to make it less likely that wealthy candidates will get elected, since their automatic advantage will be neutralized by the matching system .
It's certainly worth a try. Arbitrista, at 9:00 PM
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