So This Is Campaign Finance Reform — A Billionaire Helping Millionaires Get Elected?
“Republicans are for the rich — they just don’t relate to the little guy like me.” How many times have you heard that from some misguided liberal? An article in yesterday’s Democrat and Chronicle about campaign finance really has me wondering. How is it that the Democrats are running so many millionaires? Just look at this:
Dollinger raised money from people in Rochester and outside the district, and lent his campaign $12,500.
(snip)
Dollinger’s mother is part of the Wegman family and she contributed $9,500, while Danny Wegman contributed $6,000.
(snip)
In another competitive race, in the 55th Senate District, Democratic challenger David Nachbar has raised $50,866 and contributed $175,000 to his account
This is unbelievable. Do you, or anyone you know, have an extra $175,000 laying around so you can run for public office? How about an extra $12,500? Could you go to your mother and ask her for $9,500? Would your stepbrother kick in $6,000? My answers would be: no, no, no and no. My guess is that you would answer the same way.
And now a billionaire (Tom Golisano) wants to throw his money around to help these guys get elected.
What makes this even more incredible is that the sellouts in the Working Families Party are so desperate to get rid of Republicans, they will dump on people like Jim Alesi (who is a successful, selfmade businessman) and Joe Robach who grew up in Charlotte for these mamby-pambies.
I can’t believe that if these guys were ever to get elected they would adopt the soak the rich philosophy that the Working Families and Democratic Parties have adopted. I hope the Republicans point this out in the upcoming election. The fate of our state depends on it.
10 Responses to “So This Is Campaign Finance Reform — A Billionaire Helping Millionaires Get Elected?”
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Interesting,
what I see is that Robach is a regular guy. Maybe this is why he is so popular with everyday working people because he is one. Robachs biggest claim to fame is that he is accessible and will work with average people to help solve their issues. Maybe this is why the district dumped RICH. You meet and talk with Robach and you realize he is truly about public service.
Didn’t Golisano spend $60 million (more than either of his opponents) in the governors race to finish a poor third? I ask you would you really want this out of touch person to be helping you politically?
Now that Golisano is no longer with Paychex should stick with philanthropy and owning sports teams. He is very good at that, he has proven he does not have a nose for politics. his independence bids were disasters. Maybe if he wants to get into politics again he should support the independent parties.
I can’t understand how supporting people like Rich Dollinger will change New York. Dollinger was part of the machine that caused the problems in NY. When the state was run by republicans (way back) it was known as the “Empire State” now its “The Land of Taxes” because of people like Dollinger . His comment that he is going to support lower taxes was never something he worked on while he was in the senate.
I’m not sure what you mean that the Working Families Party “dumped on” Senator Jim Alesi. Senator Alesi never contacted the WFP for an endorsement. Nachbar did. You are entitled to your opinions, but not your own facts.
We welcome your support of Clean Money Clean Elections. Its time to take big money out of politics in Albany.
Tiberius is also entitled to his opinion but not his own facts. The “fact” is that the Senate has been controlled by Republicans for the last 30 years.
Have to agree with gtree on this one. Reality is that bitching about things is fine, but assigning blame to the minority for something the majority did isn’t fair. There are ways to fix this, but you have to do something about it (see further down about this).
I also find it hypocritical to complain about “rich politicians” while backing the uber-rich husband of an uber-rich beer heiress who’s running for president. How can you justify complaining that “only rich people can run for office” while backing one of the top 100 richest men (by marriage mainly) in the country?
We had a good discussion about how to remove money from politics earlier, which would involve forcing radio, TV, and cable companies to live up to their obligations. There are requirements by FCC (or for use of right-of-way lands for cable) to provide free blocks of time social programs. Right now it’s limited to PSAs or low-quality highschool based shows, mainly at 2 or 3 am.
They should be forced to provide prime-time blocks for political debate and advertisement, to be divided amoung candidates. Based on petition signatures at first, then on the number of raw primary voters after the primary. Other countries do this (and usually forbid other political advertisements) within certain time frames close to the election, and it drastically reduces or eliminates the need for candidates to have or raise funds for election. If they don’t raise funds, they don’t become beholden to groups that funnel money to them for re-election. And there are local and national groups backing this idea… Metro Justice being one example.
It used to be that stations had to prove they were providing their community with vital local/social services to renew their license to use the public airwaves and/or rights of way. The FCC should be purged of the media cronies that are in there now, and have their teeth restored to go after corporations that pipe in music and entertainment remotely from hundreds of miles away. Media caps should be restored like they were in the 80s where one company couldn’t own more than 8 radio, TV, or newspapers, period. Did you know that one company, ClearChannel, now owns thousands of radio stations? Anyone paying attention on 9/11 would have noticed that all but 3 radio stations (in both AM and FM) in Rochester went to a single feed: ClearChannel’s live radio coverage. Are you comfortable getting all your news for one source?
Remove the need for funds, and you’ll remove the need for fund raising, or being rich to run for office.
gtree61: “Senator Alesi never contacted the WFP for an endorsement. Nachbar did.”
Are you sure about this? There’s conflicting information out there. Supposedly, Nachbar never participated in the questionnaire endorsement process despite WFP’s strict schedule, but got endorsed anyways. Besides that, WFP just endorsed a rich, corporate execute who was able to dump $175,000 into his own race. Now there’s hypocrisy for you. The Working Families Party does not support people who support labor and unions. It’s now run by Metro Justice and the other crazy liberal groups. They’re a sham!
gtree61: “We welcome your support of Clean Money Clean Elections. Its time to take big money out of politics in Albany.”
You guys need to make sure Dave Nachbar and Rick Dollinger still support it. They did until B. Thomas Golisano promised them money for their campaigns. Are you going to make sure that they don’t go back on their word? Or do they get let off the hook. The WFP obviously doesn’t stand for principle if they don’t make these guys reject Golisano’s money.
Normally I don’t get into this kinda stuff, but many of my family members were represented by UAW (some still are) and they’ve all said that the Working Families Party doesn’t care about labor/union issues anymore. Many REAL union people left the party because of it’s non-union related practices.
They said the endorsement process here was a joke and that the voting group was stacked with non-union/labor people and democrat elected officials to make sure the votes went a certain way ahead of time.
REAL local union/labor people aren’t supporting the rich corporate executive (Dave Nachbar) and the rich union busting lawyer (Rick Dollinger). I can’t believe you guys are supporting these two idiots! Are you guys serious? You don’t believe in your own stances! You’ll sell out and look the other way when these two fools do things that fly right in the face of what you’re supposed to believe in!
Dave Nachbar and Rick Dollinger will lose this year because of this. They climbed into bed with Working Families Party and now they have fleas.
I look forward to your political spin on this. Or you can just be honest this one time and say, “Ya, we really don’t give a crap about issues anymore.”
Good points lmjp54. We’ve heard rumblings about the Working Families endorsement scam, I mean interviews, but wanted some more verification. This is pretty pathetic. We’re also hearing that since they couldn’t get people to help from our community, they brought in some hired hacks to pretend to be from Rochester to work on these races.
RICHard Dollinger’s campaign filing showed that he has paid staff “volunteering” for him. These may be who we heard about.
Are the Democrats paying for Working Families people? We heard that the Democratic Party was taking over the WFP, so this sounds right.
The Democrats want to get rid of third parties. They’ll either co-opt them or try to shut them down. WFP has no idea who they’re sharing a bed with.
They’ll soon learn.
gtree61
That’s cute about having a right to my own opinion but not my own facts, not very original but still cute. Instead of trying to be cute how about trying to be accurate? Distortions may work on the lefty blogs (where I can’t even get a post or a comment on line, but how interesting you can get posted here)
I did not say the how long the Senate had been controlled by republicans I said When the State was run by Republicans for that you need to go back over 30 years. Currently the assembly has a very liberal super majority and a very liberal Governor. It has a razor thin Republican moderate senate. (They are not conservative that’s for sure)
So how does a two time extremely well funded losing governor candidate that says he wants to change things go about doing that? By trying to take that last piece of contrary thought we have and giving it to the super liberals who are driving business out of the state? Just doesn’t make sense and makes you wonder what kind of change he is trying to bring about?
@Woody
Didn’t Obama just today complain about his controversial wife who makes lots of not so politically smart comments? Didn’t he say it was not right to attack her? He then went on to say his campaign would never attack Cindy McCain. So why are you? Cindy McCain has not funded her husbands campaign she rarely says a peep. She usually just stands by his side.
Hey gtree, another fact is that the NYS Assembly has been controlled by Democrats for over 30 years. Sorry, I forgot hypocrisy is ok when you do it. I’m with lmjp54, I remeber when the workers and organized labor actually made a difference in the WORKING Families Party, maybe if that was still the case they’d endorse candidates who make a difference for the workers of the state. A certain Rochester-area Senator, who has a 100% rating by the AFL-CIO dosen’t get the nod from union workers but a guy who got to his “interview” in his Lexus driven by a member of his staff does. Yeah that make sense and protects the workers of the community.