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has consistently fought attempts at limiting campaign
funding in the past A {hone message Street Roots
left for VanNatta through a receptionist a t his office
was not returned by press time.
Oregon is one of only six states with zero limits on
how much an individual or a political committee can
contribute to a campaign.
"Oregon is such a disgrace,” Meek said. “The
Center for Public Integrity ranks Oregon 49th when
it comes to controlling political financing. Oregon is
ranked worse than any other state in America except
Mississippi, and we barely beat Mississippi.“
He said it will take, at a minimum, two years for
the challenge to come before U.S. Supreme Court
justices, but when it does, they will have an
opportunity to use it to overturn Citizens United.
Meek said if this were to happen, laws limiting or
banning independent expenditures that were already
on the books would be resurrected - if they hadn’t
already been repealed - and it would open the door
for new laws limiting independent expenditures to he
introduced and implemented across the nation.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 5 4 majority, which
ruled in favor of Citizens United, ended with the
death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
“By the time this case gets there,” Meek said,
“unless Donald Trump wins, it should be at least 5 4
in favor of upholding the limits on independent
expenditures, if not 6-3, because there are other folks
of the Citizens United majority that may be gone by
then.”
Juan Carlos Ordonez, a proponent of the measure,
said going after Citizens United is not the only
purpose of the ballot measure.
“We have local elections to protect, to make sure
that we can put these limits on,” he said. “State
races are more expensive than races here in the
county, but county races are getting quite expensive
as well. In the last race for county chair, the winning
candidate spent close to half a million dollars, which
is a lot of money if someone wants to run for office.
It really bars people who may have very good ideas
and a message that resonates with people, but the
money is basically prohibitive, unless yon are well
connected with wealthy individuals or with special
interest”
Ordonez said the measure would elevate the
impact of small donors because if a political
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R.N.: Well, they can learn that you don’t run a presidential
campaign with only 250 candidates locally out of 2.5 million seats.
Board of education, city council - they’ve never been able to
expand their local candidacies, which would support, obviously, a
turnout for their presidential or senatorial candidates.
And it’s partly because they’re not recruiting energetic people.
They can’t recruit candidates; they can’t recruit fundraisers; they
can’t recruit enough for a budget so that they have staff. So the -.
lesson basically is: Start your own local party where you can knock
on every door, where you can do what the Tea Party did to take
over th e Republican Party.
E.G.: I f people want to get involved in your movement, what should
they do? .
R.N.: The m ost important thing for them to do is start Congress-
watchdog groups - even with 10, 20, 30 people and a letterhead.
You send it to senators, representatives. You say you’re going to
watchdog them, you’re going to disseminate it throughout the state
of Oregon, and we want to interview you and we want to sponsor
town meetings.
You start building power from knowledge and the ability to
disseminate it, and since most of the major changes in this country,
at least structurally, have to go through Congress, it’s a pretty good
idea to focuson Congress, which Occupy Wall Street didn’t do.
I’ll leave you with a woeful comment by Eugene Deb, as he was
winding up his career in 1920s. A reporter, like you, came up to
him and said, “Mr. Debs, you’ve been fighting for the working
people of this country since the 1880s. What’s your biggest
regret?” And he looked at the reporter, and he said, “My biggest ,
regret? I’ll tell you: My biggest regret is the American people,
under their constitution, can have almost anything they w ant But it
doesn’t seem that they want much of anything at all.”
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the military industrial contracting system. It starts informing
Congress, which doesn’t want to know because they give-them a
blank check.
If they give them an audit, the U.S. Governmental Accountability
Office, they can’t get a blank check Because it’s right on their
table, and they can’t keep funding stuff for redundant, wasteful
weapons, cost overrun, corruption, crime - you name i t There
isn’t a secretary of defense that’s come out against running an
audit, but they don’t do anything ahout it because Lockheed and
Grumman and Boeing - they don’t want i t They won’t say it
publi cly, but why would they want an audit when they are ripping
off the taxpayer like crazy?
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committee only accepts donations of $100 or less,
then it would be considered a “small donor
committee,” and i t would not be limited in th e size of
contributions it could make to a candidate’s
campaign. AD other political committees would not
be able to accept donations larger than $500.
To date, no other city, county or state has
introduced limits that would go against the Citizens
United ruling.
“Someone somewhere has to do it if we are going
to undo Citizens United,” Otàón&z said. He helped
get the measure on the ballot - but not in the usual
way.
He’s a member of the Multnomah County Charter
Review Committee, which meets only every six
years. Ib is committee has the ability to put changes
it would like to make to the county’s charter up for a
public vote without having to go the typical route of
raising foods and gathering signatures.
“It was just an opportunity to get this on th e ballot
quickly” Meek said.
While both Democrats and Republicans typically
vote against limits to campaign contributions, Meek
said, the charter review committee had a way around
th a t
The 15 members of the committee are selected by
members of the Oregon Legislature who have
constituents who reside within thè county, and here’s
the kicker - if two are appointed from the same
Senate district, they must be from different political
parties.
“In Multnomah County,” Meek said, “that opens
things up to the Greens and Progressive Party and
Working Families Party, and creates this little group
that is not beholden to the Democratic Party
establishment”
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader plans to promote
the measure when he’s in Portland on O ct 22 for a
book tour stop. He will deliver a speech at a 7 p.m.
fundraiser for the proposed charter amendment at
First Unitarian Church of Portland.
The county measure differs from the, proposal
Portland City Commissioner Amanda Fritz
introduced in September, which would not set any
limits on campaign contributions but rather would
offer qualified candidates a limited amount of
matching funds, paid for by city taxpayers, and limit
the amount those who receive matching funds could
raise..
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