Not the Kind of Politics We Want

Submitted by Ofer Inbar on Fri, 06/09/2006 - 6:20pm.

Today, in each of the three Democratic primaries for statewide office, the candidate with the biggest bank account announced outrageously high spending limits that threaten to turn these campaigns further away from ordinary people.

Bill Galvin announced a spending limit of $2.9 million in his campaign for secretary of state; for Lieutenant Governor, Deb Goldberg will limit herself to $4 million; for Governor, Chris Gabrieli will limit himself to $15.36 million. All three of them might as well have said "the sky's the limit".

"This is not the kind of politics that is consistent with the core values of the Democratic Party," Bonifaz responded in a press release. "This is why so many people do not participate in the political process. This level of money in politics drowns out the voices of people at the most grassroots level. And this is why I am running for Secretary of State and why I defended the Clean Elections Law. We can do better in Massachusetts. We can and should be a model for the nation, rather than another example of auction-block politics open to the highest bidder."

Effectively unlimited spending by the candidates with the most money will go into expensive TV advertising, bringing the focus of the campaigns away from people and dialogue, and onto sound bites that leave us all disconnected. Campaigning from the air does little to bring us together to talk about the issues.

This is further proof that we need to have a fully-funded public finance system with spending limits. A model system, like those that exist in Maine and Arizona, would be fully-funded and level the playing field in all statewide and state legislative races. Voters are tired of the skyrocketing amounts of money in our elections.

John Bonifaz has been fighting for clean elections for as long as Galvin has been Secretary here in Massachusetts. It's time to put the leader in office.