In Elections It's All About the Money

By Donovan Steutel, Letter to the Editor

Re "All politics is familial," editorial, April 8

Your editorial could barely fit the litany of examples of, shall we say, incumbent nepotism. How are these seamless handoffs possible? Campaign funding is the real community property in politics. The spouse, child or sibling of an incumbent inherits the family's big campaign donors and their campaign agendas.

Term limits were supposed to allow good leaders with fresh ideas a chance to seriously compete for office. Term limits or no, money trumps everything: leadership, character, intelligence and vision.

The only solution is a complete bypass of the existing system: public funding for candidates with broad, in-district support of constituents. This is rightly called "clean money," and if the Senate and the governor let us, we will get to vote on such a system to allow strong community leaders to run competitive campaigns regardless of wealthy allies.

DONOVAN STEUTEL

Pasadena

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)