I don’t mind New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s advocacy for gun control, but no single human being should be able to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars into a congressional campaign regardless of whether they are doing it to fight the National Rifle Association or because they want closer relations with Israel or because they want less scrutiny of their casino empire. Mayor Bloomberg is supporting both Republicans and Democrats, but the problem isn’t who he supports. It’s that he is giving $2 million to a Democrat in Florida and $1 million to a Republican in Illinois and $3.3 million to oust a Democrat in California. He gave over one million dollars to Connecticut Republican Andrew Roraback, and they have never even spoken to each other. How does Bloomberg know that Roraback has the character to serve in Congress? From perusing his website? Who hands a million dollars to someone without even talking to them to make sure they aren’t going to be the next Eric Massa, Anthony Weiner, or John Edwards?
Overall, more than 80% of the dark money that was spent in this cycle went to support Republican candidates. So, I am just guessing that most Republicans are okay with a campaign finance system that so completely favors their side. But they can get a taste of this medicine in a few places from Bloomberg and his big government gun-confiscating socialism. How does it feel to have a billionaire swoop into your district and hand more than a million dollars to the Democrat? If we are going to fix our campaign finance laws, we are going to have to reach out to the Republicans who agree with us that democracy ought to be about equality and not about who can woo the most billionaires. You could even argue that the billionaires who floated Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum’s campaigns cost Mitt Romney dearly by delaying his ability to organize his campaign against Obama and forcing him to squander resources while getting bad-mouthed by fellow Republicans for months on end. Without the Citizens United ruling, Romney would have won the nomination in February. Of course, that’s because he’s a billionaire.
In any case, we have to get back to a system where no individual can contribute enough on their own to decide the outcome of an election. This current system is ridiculous. This year we saw whole presidential campaigns financed by basically one person. That’s as crazy as it can get. Right?
