Last time we took a look at the number of contested primaries that are coming up in September. Pretty unimpressive. Today, a look at the choices voters will have – or not – in November.
For the statewide races, the picture is pretty bleak. Governor and Lt. Governor will be contested, of course. But beyond those two races, the party formerly known as the GOP is running a challenger only in the Attorney General’s race – and a pretty weak one at that. Secretary of State, Treasurer, and Auditor are all guaranteed to stay in Democratic hands. Good for Democrats, bad for democrats.
The situation in the legislature is even more lame. By the numbers:
- Senate. There is no GOP candidate in 23 races. There is no Democratic candidate in 4 races. So for 27 of the 40 Senate seats (67.5%), voters in November will have no choice.
- House. There is no GOP candidate in 107 (!) races. There is no Democratic candidate in 13 races. So for 120 of the 160 House seats (75%), voters in November will have no choice.
Wow. So overall, 147 of the 200 seats (73.5%) in the legislature will be uncontested this November. That is shocking.
It’s quite possible that we will be dead last among the 50 states for contested legislative races this year. In 2002 and 2004, the worst states were South Carolina with 71.8%, and Arkansas with 74.6%, respectively (thanks to Jimbob for finding the link). For reference purposes, Massachusetts was second-to-last in 2002, with 68.5% uncontested, and in 2004, the year of the big Romney push, we crawled up to number 27 (of the 44 states holding legislative elections that year, and not counting non-partisan Nebraska) with a paltry 46.5% uncontested. The national averages in 2004 and 2002 were 38.7% and 36.9%, respectively. We’re going to give them all a run for their money this year.
Now, don’t get me wrong here – I’m not saying I want more Republicans in the state legislature. Far from it – big props to Matt Mulvey for being the only Democrat to take on an incumbent Republican Senator (Robert Hedlund) this year. And shame on the state Democratic party for not managing to field a challenger to Republican Senate incumbents Bruce Tarr, Michael Knapik, Richard Tisei, and Scott Brown. Same for the House – it’s appalling that the Dems are conceding even one seat, much less 13, to the GOP. This kind of thing would be unheard of in some other states – in 5 states in 2004 (MN, MI, CA, HI, and WV), the total numbers of uncontested seats were in single digits.
No, what I want is competition. I want incumbents to have to defend what they have or haven’t done while in office. I want them out in their districts debating their opponents on local cable TV. We have recently learned some of the painful lessons of the Incumbent Party running the show for too long.
All of that said, it’s not hard to understand why races go uncontested. It’s hard to dislodge incumbents – it takes time and money that many people don’t have. One can even feel a bit – just a bit – of sympathy (pity, maybe) for the state GOP, which made a big push in 2004 to contest more races, only to actually lose a few seats. This year, they’ve clearly taken the “what’s the point?” approach.
What’s to be done? That’s the topic for next time.
Previous episodes of The Fix:
afertig says
Yeah that is pretty pathetic. That said, I don’t really know that challenging somebody for the sake of challenging somebody is all that great of an idea either. Competition is good, but only if both competitors have something real to offer.
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I think about it another way. Suppose I’m a dedicated public servant who wants to help the people of my district. With the thousands upon thousands of real dollars, plus the opportunity cost of time and effort spent on a campaign that (based on rates of incumbency) would likely fail, wouldn’t it make sense for me to find a different job that can do some real good? I’m not saying that just because somebody is likely to lose they should just give up and work at charity or public policy. In fact, I do believe that lost causes are often the best causes.
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But most good people who would run for state rep or state senator could probably do more good doing something besides running a losing campaign.
lonnie-brennan says
I serve as a selectman in the Town of Georgetown. It has been more than clear to me that our current state rep. pays only fleeting attention to any city/town other than her own. I’m almost tempted to send her driver a set of maps so they can find the other 5 cities/towns in the district.
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Yes, it’s easier to do nothing and not run.
Yes, it’s an INCREDIBLE uphill battle to run against an incumbent, but I could serve a zillion decades on the board of selectmen and never have time to make up for the waste that legislatures like Barbara L’Italien cause in our commonwealth.
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So, have at it folks. I’m running against a rep. who voted NOT to vote on the marriage issue until 2 DAYS AFTER the NOV. ELECTION. What a cowardly act. My thoughts are on http://www.beatbarb.com. Lonnie Brennan
mjm238 says
Thank you for reminding me to send a check to Barbara L’Italien. Though I don’t live in her district I know that she serves not only Andover, not only the 18th Essex but the entire state of Massachusetts with her hard work and advocacy for special education.
Perhaps you remember a citizen’s forum at Masconomet last April. That was you in the audience, wasn’t it. I believe Masconomet is in Boxford not Andover. Did you see the Republican Reps for Boxford and Middleton. No! Barbara was there. Whenever we need her Barbara is there.
I don’t agree with her vote on postponing the vote on the marriage amendment. But she is still One of the finest state reps I have had the honor of knowing!
north-andover says
Learn the facts at http://www.BarbaraLitalien.com
bob-neer says
Of course, the final unelected authority that makes our laws in Massachusetts doesn’t approve of those. I completely agree that more competition for legislative seats would improve our state government — it improves just about everything else. On the other hand, deficient elected officials is not a new problem in America. “Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
the Massachusetts legislatureCongress. But I repeat myself.” Mark Twain.polk says
California’s term limits have been under a lot of criticism because they limit people to two terms. With only one election campaign and one re-election campaign at stake, the office-holders become incredibly dependent on issue groups and lobbyists, both for money for that single re-election effort and for information about the multitude of issues – since they have neither the time nor the incentive to educate themselves and become policy experts.
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Unintended consequences, but consequences nevertheless.
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You’ve gotta give Mass. legislators credit for one thing … the vast majority of them are hardworking policy wonks who work incredible hours to push forward their policy initiatives, sometimes for decades. Wouldn’t it be a bad idea to sweep those people out every few years?
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On a side note, it’s not just running for office that’s expensive. Have you considered the cost of being a State Rep. or State Senator, or wondered why they are almost exclusively all lawyers?
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The current salary of a State Rep/Sen is around 52k. Leadership pay can make that as much as 72k, but is obviously not available to everyone. This low amount almost inevitably requires a 2nd job, and for most people, the only feasible side job is that of an attorney, since the hours can be flexible.
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The low salary discourages a lot of people from running, and it’s one of the most important factors preventing competition. We have a full time legislature, but the skill sets required by legislators to run and win are much better compensated in the private sector. Charming, driven, smart people who can convince thousands of people to trust them do fairly well in the business world. They sure as hell make a lot more than 52k.
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There’s more to the incumbency issue than meets the eye.
afertig says
I’d also add, though, that one of the reasons lawmakers are often lawyers is that it’s a good idea when crafting law to know how the law works. And if you’re interested enough in law to run for office, you’re probably also interested enough in law to go to law school.
stomv says
but consider this: there’s not many laws about creating laws, and most of ’em are Constitutional.
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Most of the laws are about other things. Construction. Education. Environment. Criminology. Health.
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Wouldn’t it be just as reasonable to have experts in these fields designing policy, with legislative aides, consultants, and lobbyists helping them craft/engineer the law so it accomplishes its intent?
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I’m glad that there are lawers for legislators. Still, I wish that there were more “regular folks” — after all, attorneys come from a pretty small subset of the Massachusetts population. Maybe we need a few more doctors and Indian chiefs. A salary increase might do that.
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Personally, I’d also like to see Senate seats held longer than two years, perhaps four. While giving them more power of incumbancy (4 years to raise dough between elections), it would also free up more of their time to focus on legislation without looking over their shoulder every few minutes. Leave that to the House.
porcupine says
To prevent more shenanigans like the Halloween Pay Hike, when they doubled their salary.
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And they’re up to about $58,000 without any leadership or committee stipend.
stomv says
If a voter doesn’t have a choice* in November but had a choice in a primary, does that count as a choice? Of the 147 uncontested November candidates, how many had a primary challenge?
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kmonty says
Well, in the Secretary of State race, Galvin is facing tough competition from Bonifaz that is forcing him to expain his inaction over the past dozen years in office. How would having a republican run against him make things better? That said, Jill Stein’s ( http://www.jillstein.com ) campaign, especially if you agree with Bonifaz’s message, is right on the money. I personally find it very exciting that there is going to be a race where the Democrats cannot whine “spoiler” for once and have to have a legitimate debate with a third party.
kmonty says
http://www.jillstein.org was the address
david says
stomv says
A little set theory for us, yes? Remember Venn diagrams?
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Set A: legislative districts with a primary battle. Size == 29.
Set B: legislative districts with a November battle. Size == 53.
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Total size is 29 + 53 = 82, right? Well, almost certainly not.
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You see, Set A and Set B overlap almost certainly. That is, there is almost certainly a legislative district with both a primary battle and a November battle.
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So, what we do know is that 82 is an upper bound on the total number of legislative districts with “a choice”, out of a total of 200. 41% of legislative districts, at most, gave voters a choice in their district at the primary or November election.
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Now, that’s not 41% of voters. After all, voters choose both a Sen and a Rep, so it’s possible that many more voters got a choice in at least one race, or the opposite: many voters got a choice in no race, whereas others got choices in both races. If I had to guess, I’d bet it’s closer to the latter than the former; some areas of MA are more competitive, and that competition should exist in both House and Senate races generally speaking.
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So, I ask my question again: Of the 200 legislative districts, how many had (either) a primary or a Nov race (or both)? We know the total is no more than 82 and no fewer than 53, but we don’t know what it is without comparing the contents of Set A and Set B.
david says
I understood your question. All the raw materials you need are linked in episode 1. Do I have to do everything myself?
stomv says
I saw what was in episode 1. What I didn’t see was the listing of which actual races were competitve (Nov) in episode 2. Without that data, how could I find the intersection?
david says
’cause there really are too many – it would make the post unreadably long (even though it’s not enough, we’re still talking about 50 competitive races).
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What you’d have to do is (1) using the Secretary of State’s information, determine which elections in November will not be contested (by going through the Dem and GOP listings and searching for races labeled “No nominations”), then (2) compare those races to the contested primaries in Episode 1 (which I believe is a complete list), and see how they match up. It would be an interesting exercise, but one that I just haven’t had time to do. The data are not arranged for doing analyses of this kind, so it’s fairly painstaking work.
stomv says
I was hoping that either
(a) you had a list lying around from other analysis, or
(b) you knew of a more accessible list on the web somewhere.
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Oh well. I’m content with the bounds of 53 <= num_lege_races_with_choice <= 82.
What would be interesting — and A LOT of work — would be to build a database by precinct, and then assign each Sen / House race by precinct. Then, you could map each House/Sen district to its corresponding precincts. Then you could generate a visual map of MA, with shades for assorted levels of competition (Dem primary, GOP primary, D vs. GOP in general) for House and for Senate. You could even count the number of registered voters in each precinct who have 1 or more choices vs, those who have none, etc.
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This could be a useful tool for analyzing the lege bodies as wholes for all sorts of measurable identifier as a function of geography. The question is: how useful? I might be able to put something like this together, but it’s not worth it unless it would be a particularly useful tool. Of course, if coded well, little work would be needed to change scale/scope and use it for any state, or for Federal, or even for Town Meeting behavior.
porcupine says
but three are GOP!
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Not counting the US Senate.
george-phillies says
Under state law, you can run a sticker campaign in the primary of your party, if your party has a primary. (Thus, Democrats and Republicans only). You can do this even if no one is on the ballot . If you get more votes than the number of signatures required to get on the ballot, that being how you beat no one, you get on the November ballot of your party.
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So, if you are a reader in a district where your party has no candidate:
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If you get 150 sticker votes for State Rep or 300 for State Senate, you will be on the ballot in November. There are some forms you must file.
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So, if you are unhappy about the 13 Republican State Reps and 5 Republican State Senators running unopposed, and you live in one of those Districts and satisfy all the other requirements to be eligible to run, and are willing to do a lot of work, you can correct the situation. (The same applies to Republican readers.)
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Actually, you do not have to be a member of the Party in whose primary you are running the sticker campaign, but let’s keep things simple.
david says
from Wookie. Guys, PLEASE learn how to make links rather than posting huge URLs, or at least use tinyurl.com first.
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I saw in the Globe that the four statewide Green Party candidates are collecting signatures as a slate and that they are all well short of the necessary signatures. They have less than 2,500 with about a month to go. Stein only needs 5,000 statewide certified, where Ross needs 10,000.
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Link
tom-m says
Sorry about that.
david says
Thanks to a code update from the powers that be that rule this site, now overly-long URLs will automatically be truncated. Still, we encourage everyone to link rather than just post the URLs.
bostonshepherd says
I didn’t do that analysis (though I’m tempted) but I’ll posit that the percentage of uncontested state senate and house races is highly correlated to restrictive campaign finance regulations.
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I’m with David on this. I want political competition. We need more than new blood. We need a transfusion. (Preferably red blood although blue blood works too.) I care less what the outcome is than in a political campaign system that allows, and encourages, new blood to challenge the status quo.
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Here’s my solution:
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Frankly, I think the sclerotic political system we have is exactly the sort BMG progressives seek, one in which those likely to seek office are (a) committed activists, willing to forego jobs, careers, and financial security, (b) entrenched incumbents (as long as they’re Democrats), or (c) wealthy self-funders.
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I hear BMG bloggers complain how money corrupts politics, but I see only more corruption as “reforms” further cap state and local campaign contributions. Extend the logic by prohibiting all campaign contributions … what sort of system does that get us?
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Perhaps increasing the turnover would help limit political corruption. Start by dropping the all the caps.
stomv says
A few questions:
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1. Limit unrestricted contributions to state residents Is this US and MA Constitutional? Heck, if it is, why not just bar all out-of-state contributions?
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2. Allow the candidate to replace their income during the campaign with funds from contributions. This is interesting too. Would you cap it at $x per month? Would they be required to pay income tax, social security tax (both employer and employee), medicare, etc.?
andy says
As to point number 2 raised above and by shep I am pretty sure that this is already in place on the federal level. To my knowledge, which admittedly isn’t very in depth, there is no cap. This sort of makes sense because the more the candidate draws the more it hurts him or herself. If someone knows otherwise please correct me.
sco says
I feel like Alan Keyes got into some trouble for doing this while running for Senate in Maryland, years ago. Not that it was illegal, but donors didn’t necessarily appreciate that.
david says
1. I think you probably could not bar all out of state contributions. But I think if you let out-of-staters contribute up to a limit, and let in-staters donate as much as they want, that might survive the Buckley v. Valeo analysis. Would be a difficult and interesting case.
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2. Haven’t we already started doing that? I’m sure I’ve heard about this somewhere. Maybe the FEC is allowing it for federal races?
reformerben says
So as I go around the state talking to folks about the Mass Ballot Freedom Campaign, people often ask how Ballot Freedom (Queston 2 on the ballot this November 7th!) would really increase the competitiveness of elections and the accountability of politicians, given that the only legal change our reform would make is to allow political parties, both big and small, to build ballot-line coalitions.
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Here’s my answer, and I hope it’s at least worth considering in light of the severe lack of competition David points out and our own analyses of how organized constituencies build power:
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When voters see that they can support alternative parties without throwing their votes away, they become much more likely to vote their values and actually use those third parties’ lines to cast their ballot. And as the number of citizens who vote on a third party’s ballot line for a major-party candidate grows over time, those parties become more meaningful — not just in demonstrating how much support they provided for a major-party candidate, but because the growth of their grassroots base opens up the playing field for one of their own to run.
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Think of it this way: an insurgent challenger coming out of such a base – either in the primary or the general – could say to voters in her district, “Look: our minor party produced 25% of the incumbent’s vote total last time and forced him to work on our issues. But now we’re strong enough to mount a credible insurgent challenge; so let’s do it!” The strength that the minor party showed in the past is a politically legitimizing factor: that strong track record will help convince people who are serious about winning to devote time and energy and resources to the campaign and to vote for the challenger in the primary election or in November.
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Thus, Ballot Freedom is not just about ballot-line coalitions; rather, it provides a long-term way to build the strength of independent parties, bringing more voices into the system, encouraging more competitive races, and helping to restore the health of our democracy.
sco says
I’m no stranger to cross-endorsements. My father ran successfully this past election on both the Republican and Democratic ballot lines for his town election in rural upstate NY. This is a pretty common practice there.
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Now, how does allowing two parties endorse the same person increase competition? There is still only one name on the ballot, just that it’s the same name each time.
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I understand that the choice is now you can support a new party, but if that party never (or rarely) fields candidates other than the major party candidate, what difference does it make?
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It seems to me that this is just allowing us the illusion of choice.
stomv says
I agree with sco; I’m not so sure it increases choice. However, I think it can influence the elected official to behave in a way that is more in tune with the voters.
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I’ll use Dem/Green as an example, but I’m sure you could just as easily use GOP/Conservative(NY) as another.
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Let’s say the Greens keep cross-endorsing the Dem, but the Green percentage grows. That sends the message to that Dem that more and more voters want the Dem to behave more in-line with Green core values. If he doesn’t, it’s at his own peril, because with enough distance a Green Party candidate might run against him, or a Dem with a more green flair might in a primary.
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By taking a proxy vote of voter values, it gives feedback to whoever is elected about what issues people are voting on — which may help him decide how to vote/propose legislation that his constituents want.
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Is that reasonable?
reformerben says
…the point I really want to make is that over a period of election cycles (two, three, four cycles…), the fact that cross-endorsement means you can actually get people to vote for an alternative party without throwing their vote away on a candidate with no chance of winning means that you have a much easier task of building up your base. Then, having demonstrated growing strength, you’re much more likely to be able to field candidates who will be able to run credible and serious campaigns.
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This is where I point to the New York Working Families Party as an example. By building up a meaningful base of voters (10, 15, 20% in some districts) who reliably vote WFP, they have created a context in which progressive Democrats and independents feel like they have the infrastructure, outside of old-school Democratic Party machines, which they can rely on to help them run real campaigns. Thus, they can therefore challenge those machine Democrats in primaries and in general elections, knowing they’ll have significant WFP support to back them up.
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It’s why we keep talking ’bout this thing as an “inside-outside” strategy. We’re not asking folks to abandon all ties to the D’s and the R’s, as the Greens or Libertarians might ask you to do. Instead, we’re saying this: if you’re not satisfied with the way the insiders run the game, Ballot Freedom means you’ll have a chance to use your own ballot line to pressure them while growing your grassroots strength.
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At least that’s the idea.
bostonshepherd says
Besides, isn’t the idea to get an influx of new ideas and new outsiders to run for office?
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“Ballot freedom” is just another way of making candidates with marginal general appeal, typically, as I see it, fringe activists, more viable through ballot trickery. How does it encourage new blood?
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Political campaigns cost money. Restrict the flow of money into campaigns, and you get fewer campaigns. The fact that these restrictions are promulgated by incumbents should be reason enough to reverse our current campaign finance reform laws … of course they’re for restriction their challengers’ funds! How more self-evident can this be?
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Open the spigots and you’ll get many new political participants, many of whom would never have thought to run for office because, in the Commonwealth, it’s a life’s pursuit.
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How about it? Let’s try it: eliminate the cap on campaign contributions.
stomv says
I suspect you are right in your claim that removing the donation cap results in more candidates.
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However, I’m not so sure that it will result in better candidates. Given that money makes such a huge impact in voter outreach, it seems like we’d end up with a whole bunch of candidates with access to vast wealth. Not exactly salt of the Earth type folks. By capping the donations, you’re forcing the candidate to reach out to many people, not just pander to a few rich donors.
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Unless, of course, the rich donor is the candidate. This, admittedly, throws a monkey wrench in the analysis.