Today’s badly broken campaign finance system benefits wealthy interests, and leaves hundreds of millions of ordinary Americans on the outside looking in at Washington’s rigged system.
Fred Wertheimer’s Weekly Note | August 25, 2022 Our nation’s capital today floats on an ocean of influence money provided to elect favored candidates and/or to seek results in Washington. Case in point: Peter Thiel is a multibillionaire venture capitalist who co-founded PayPal and was Facebook’s first outside investor. Peter Thiel symbolizes today’s campaign finance […]
NPR’s Planet Money: Suitcases, Secret Lists, and Citizens United Listen Now “If money is buying influence and results over government policies, then most Americans are shut out, because the campaign finance system is dominated by people who are putting up very large sums of money.” – D21 President Fred Wertheimer There’s a corner of […]
“A small donor matching system using public funds would help level the playing field and give politicians a reason to listen to ordinary voters.” — Chicago Sun-Times A small donor matching fund system for candidates running for state office in Illinois “would give candidates a reason to spend more time listening to ordinary people instead […]
In Their Own Words: The Candidates Empowered by the Small Donor Revolution In anticipation of tomorrow’s vote to proceed on S. 1, the For the People Act, Democracy 21, in partnership with People for the American Way (PFAW) and the Declaration for American Democracy Coalition (DFAD), will be releasing a series of videos of women […]
Enclosed for your information is a piece by Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer entitled, “The ‘Swiftest and Surest Way’ to Purge Corruption,” which was published here on Medium on April 16, 2021, and released in Wertheimer’s Political Report on April 15, 2021. Read the full piece here or below. The “Swiftest and Surest Way” to […]
Enclosed for your information is an article titled “Companies Pull Back Political Giving Following Capitol Violence,” published here by The New York Times on January 11, 2021, and an article titled “Corporate revolt shakes political fundraising world,” published here by CNN on January 11, 2021. According to the New York Times article: The moves are […]
“This is a rotten system, but as long as it exists, both parties are going to use it,” said Fred Wertheimer, who runs the watchdog group Democracy 21 and is part of a coalition of more than 170 groups, urging the incoming president to tackle issues ranging from voting rights to greater transparency in campaign […]
Fred Wertheimer, who runs the campaign finance overhaul group Democracy 21, noted that the 2020 elections shattered previous spending records with an estimated price tag of some $14 billion, including $2.6 billion in outside spending. He said the public matching funds system was sorely needed. “Without providing candidates with this alternative way to finance their […]
FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | October 29, 2020 Staggering amounts of campaign money are being raised and spent in the 2020 presidential and congressional elections. Total spending in this election cycle is estimated to reach a record-shattering $14 billion, more than twice the amount spent in the 2016 election cycle, according to the Center for […]
Fred Wertheimer, president of the nonprofit Democracy 21 who’s tracked campaign fundraising since the Watergate era, said in a phone interview the fundraising this year is more than “anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.” Outside groups can focus money on the most competitive races, and the result, he said, “is a campaign finance system dominated […]
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