Panel engages implications of campaign finance reform

Lauren Sutherland Assistant News Editor

On Tuesday, April 18, the Vassar chapter of Democracy Matters: Students for Clean Elections hosted a panel discussion entitled “Progressive Politics and Clean Elections,” which included various political personalities such as the New Paltz Mayor Jason West. The discussion focused on campaign finance reform as a means of bringing important national issues to the forefront of the democratic process.

“Our organization promotes campaigns financed by the government rather than by privileged donors,” said Democracy Matters President Becky Rice ’08, adding that such measures would wrest politics from the interests of corporations and wealthy private donors and would allow “people to have more say in politics.”

According to Rice, the goal of Tuesday’s panel was to “bridge the gap” between campaign finance reform and other important political issues by “discussing liberal issues that Vassar students care about within the context of how they are affected by the central issue of clean elections.”

Each of the panelists was given 15 minutes to discuss political finance reform in terms of his or her respective issue. Attorney Lisa Danetz, who represented the National Voting Rights Institute in Boston, focused upon how the financially perpetuated inadequacy of political representation suppresses the political voices of minority groups who cannot finance elections and whose candidates receive considerably less political funding.

Colgate University Professor Emeritus and Executive Director of Democracy Matters Joan Mandle addressed the “unequal political playing field” as it relates to women. She emphasized the lack of attention paid to “women’s issues” such as healthcare and education reform due to a financially constrained female political force.

Environmentalist Gene Fischer discussed the role of huge corporations that provide campaign capital to politicians in return for financial incentives. According to Fischer, corporations whose profits would be adversely affected by environmental reform use their political clout to prevent the enactment of environmental legislation.

West, a member of the Green Party, reflected on the lack of political mobility afforded to those outside of the country’s traditional two party system. He promoted increased participation in local governments as a way of accessing an exclusive system in which two dominant parties have a monopoly over financial support.

The question and answer session focused on the apathy of American society, and the paradoxical disinterest in campaign finance reform of those groups most impacted by it.

Mandle attributed the apparent apathy to a disempowered society that does not believe it possesses the power to bring about real political change.

Danetz presented the problem of the language used when addressing the issue of campaign finance reform. She said that much of the rhetoric of political finance reform promotes the eradication of corruption and does not evoke the ideas of equality of political representation to which many would respond positively.

As the Executive Director of Democracy Matters, Mandle also called for increased activism at the grassroots level to initiate lasting reform to the current system of campaign financing.

“Clean elections are the gateway to every progressive issue you care about,” said Mandle. “If it’s for student loans if nothing else, or the assurance that you grandparents will get prescription medication, all that stuff is blocked because a small proportion of people are allowed to control the government.”

The panel was co-sponsored by the College Democrats, the Vassar Greens, the Feminist Alliance, and the Student Activist Union.