ABSTRACT: We need to elect US Senators, Representatives, and ultimately a President who will support an end to Super PACs and unlimited money in our political campaigns. Lawrence Lessig is undertaking an innovative and counter-intuitive strategy to do so: creating a Super PAC to elect Congress people who will support the needed changes in our campaign financing laws. Lessig and his organization, Rootstrikers (http://www.rootstrikers.org/#!/), have developed a well thought out plan to do this, and you can be part of it.
In the 2014 elections, they plan to target a small number of races with the goal of winning at least 5 of them – if they can raise the $12 million needed to fund their plan. The plan raises half of the $12 million using a crowd-funded, kickstarter-type approach. Lessig has pledged to find a match for the $6 million raised through crowd-funding. The initial campaign was launched on May 1. In thirteen days, the targeted $1 million was raised, with 13,000 contributors giving an average of $87 per contribution. In June, the second round was launched with the goal of raising the other $5 million by July 4.
For more information and to participate in this effort, please go to the MAYDAY Super PAC site (https://mayday.us/old). If you’d like to make a contribution or pledge to this effort, you can do so through my pledge page at: https://my.mayday.us/t/35e1-John-Lippitt#_=_.
FULL POST: We need to elect US Senators, Representatives, and ultimately a President who will support an end to Super PACs and unlimited money in our political campaigns. However, this seems like a Catch-22 because these elected officials have been successful using the current system. For any candidate to single-handedly fight the current system is like unilateral disarmament; it’s essentially guaranteed to be a losing strategy.
So how do we solve this conundrum? Harvard Law School Professor and campaign reform advocate, Lawrence Lessig [1], is undertaking an innovative and counter-intuitive strategy: creating a Super PAC to elect Congress people who will support the needed changes in our campaign financing laws.
Lessig and his organization, Rootstrikers (http://www.rootstrikers.org/#!/), have developed a well thought out plan to do this [2], and you can be part of it.They are creating a Super PAC to literally end Super PACs. In the 2014 elections, they plan to target a small number of races with the goal of winning at least 5 of them – if they can raise the $12 million needed to fund their plan. This would allow them to learn what it takes to win campaigns and, second, by winning, to convince others to take this effort seriously. Then, they plan to undertake a much larger effort in 2016.
The plan raises half of the $12 million using a crowd-funded, kickstarter-type approach. The money will be raised in two stages – first, by raising $1 million in thirty days, and then, if that goal is met, raising another $5 million in the next thirty days. Lessig has pledged to find a match for the $6 million raised through crowd-funding, so that by July 4 the Super PAC would have the $12 million needed for the targeted 2014 campaigns.
The initial campaign was launched on May 1. This is “May Day,” which evokes the distress call, “MAYDAY,” and provides the name of the Super PAC: the MAYDAY PAC. In thirteen days, the targeted $1 million was raised, with 13,000 contributors giving an average of $87 per contribution. (I contributed $25.) In June, the second round was launched with the goal of raising the other $5 million by July 4. If that’s successful and the additional matches are found, the campaign will be kicked off with a goal of winning at least five races in 2014. This will build the momentum needed for a much bigger Super PAC and campaign in 2016. [3]
For more information and to participate in this effort, please go to the MAYDAY Super PAC site (https://mayday.us/old). If you’d like to make a contribution or pledge to this effort, you can do so through my pledge page at: https://my.mayday.us/t/35e1-John-Lippitt#_=_.
I do believe that our campaign financing system is at the root of the problems of our democracy and our society. I’ll share more information about the current state of our campaign finance system and background on this MAYDAY effort in subsequent posts. You can find past posts on this topic by clicking on the Campaigns: Financing & Voting category in the right sidebar of my blog (below the list of recent posts, the monthly archives, and the FOLLOW button).
[1] For more information about Lawrence Lessig, see http://www.lessig.org/about/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig.
[2] Listen to Lessig’s 14 minute TED talk at http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_the_unstoppable_walk_to_political_reform?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:+TEDTalks_video+(TEDTalks+Main+(SD)+-+Site)&utm_content=TED+talks&utm_term=NTechMedia.
[3] Lessig, L., 6//4/14, “What’s so bad about a Super PAC?” https://medium.com/law-of-the-land/whats-so-bad-about-a-superpac-c7cbcf617b58 (This blog post is a summarized excerpt from this article.)
Lippitt's Policy and Politics Blog 