Public Financing
By Rachel Antell, Letter to the Editor
In the Times front page article "Families friendly to
candidates," reporter Kate Folmar describes the way that
very wealthy families are bundling campaign contributions
in order to give tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars
to all of the candidates for governor.
She is correct in asserting that the only solution to
ending this flouting of election laws is with pure public
financing of funding campaigns.
Fortunately, this solution is well within reach of
Californians because there is a bill in the Legislature
(AB583) that is modeled after very successful laws in the
states of Arizona and Maine.
Voters in those states can elect state candidates who
accept only public, or clean money, campaign financing.
Those clean money candidates are then accountable only to
the voters, not to big contributors. Now is the time to
make clean money happen in California by visiting
www.caclean.org, and sending a message to senators that
they should pass AB583.
Rachel Antell
Oakland
See the article on Contra Costa Times website