The Price is Wrong
Jun
14
No joke, indeed.
Chris Gabrieli has blown his chance to show that he was sincere in getting into the governor’s race based on his idears by making a joke out of the campaign spending cap.
In other words, by setting a spurious spending cap Mr. Gabrieli effectively has defeated the core purpose of the public financing law: to reduce the role of big money in statewide campaigns. That may serve his narrow political purposes, but it hardly bespeaks a balanced, global approach to policymaking.
Yes Chris, you have a very large bank account. We’re all impressed. Not.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Wow, nice editorial. Expresses my sentiment exactly, and THEN some!
I’m gonna have to steal the link from you later today I think (with acknowledgement of course).
Right now, my tummy’s all pissed that it’s not being fed, so I’m off to lunch.
Posted on June 15th, 2006 at 8:52 am
Ug, I ate too much. Mambo burritos are very filling. Didn’t help that I got a frappe next door afterwards.
Posted on June 15th, 2006 at 10:09 am
Steal away - thanks for the link back. I could use the traffic.
Hmmmm burritos…. Yummy. My tumbly is all rumbly now.
Posted on June 15th, 2006 at 10:28 am
I too am troubled by his announcement, but I’m not quite sure why. So, three questions to elucidate the nature of the gaffe?
1) What is meant by “reduce the role of big money in statewide campaigns”? I always thought the important part of campaign contribution and spending limits was to reduce the role of fundraising and/or lobbying. What is the principle here? An equal playing field? Taking money out doesn’t equalize the playing field. Other candidates have other sorts of advantages unrelated to the merits of their policies (e.g. preexisting relationships with other political leaders).
2) How do you feel about Governor Corzine’s profligate spending in his two general elections? I didn’t love the means, but fully supported the outcomes. Maybe the principle here is that burning dollars in a primary hurts the party?
3) Are you troubled by the part of the argument that assumes more money will peal off voters? Or are you just resigned to that part of the nature of the beast?
Posted on June 16th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Welcome fog. Apologies for the late reply. It’s been crazy busy in beyond 495 land.
I’m not an expert on campaign financing by any means. I can only tell you what my gut reaction was to Gabrieli setting the cap so high. It just bugged because of Gabrieli’s habit of using his money to buy political access. Yes, I’m a big girl and I understand that money is important in politics. It’s the mother’s milk, as they say, but when a candidate needs to rely so much on money, rather than putting together a campaign built on ideas as well as a competent field organzation, it just bothers me.
Your point about candidates having other types of advantages other than money is a good one. There are candidates who can cash in on political favors and we saw how that worked for the candidates at the convention. I understand that there is a certain amount of delegate jockeying that is going to happen at the convention. Candidates or their surrogates will do what they can to pursuade delegates to vote for them, but what really bothered me was the idea that there were whole blocks of delegates being used to swing the vote totals a certain way. It was widely reported that Sal DiMasi worked to do that very thing for Gabrieli. It just bothers me.
To me, reducing the role of big money in statewide campaigns makes a candidate rely more in ideas. Ideas sometimes get tossed under the bus because candidates have to spend so much time on fundraising just to be competitive.
I didn’t follow the Corzine election other than the tidbits I read about it on DailyKos. I agree with you about the means and the outcome. I think money hurts the candidates in the primary if they use it to bash each other other the head and force candidates to spend all of their cash, so they have nothing left for the general election. That is a huge concern of mine going into this primary. It may be overly idealistic of me, but I still think that the person with the best ideas should prevail, not the candidate with the most money.
I’m hoping that organization will be more of a factor than money in this primary. We’ll see, I guess.
No matter what though, it’s probably going to be ugly and I don’t think that’s good for Democrats overall.
Posted on June 20th, 2006 at 7:55 am