To Create Structural Change and Real Representation, Start with Campaign Finance Reform
By Candace Valenzuela
I’m a candidate for Congress, and I spend seven hours every day on the phone asking people for money.
It is an exhausting and painstaking grind for many, but funding a campaign is a particular challenge for candidates like me.
As a progressive that has sworn off corporate PAC money, funding a competitive campaign is a tall task. The retiring incumbent in my district didn’t have to build grassroots support; the boatloads of cash he took from corporate interests propelled him to eight terms in Congress.
As a Black woman, the challenge of raising money is even more daunting. An analysis of 2018 House races conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics found that Black female candidates raised, on average, less than half what white female candidates raised, with the gap driven almost entirely by a difference in support from large individual contributors (>$200).
My parents didn’t go to college, they enlisted in the Army. Growing up, I battled poverty and experienced homelessness. So I didn’t step into the political arena with a wealthy network of friends that could bankroll my career.
These are challenges that many progressive candidates of color face, and it was highlighted in my race: I was outspent 2 to 1 in the March 3rd primary by a white woman whose fundraising prowess was driven by those large individual contributors.
This isn’t a new story. Women, people of color, and poor folks are used to having to work twice as hard to get half as far, but in this moment of national reckoning over race, justice, and equity, it’s time to reexamine how our current campaign finance system stifles representation and blocks change.
Why don’t we have a Congress that looks like our communities? Why aren’t our leaders responsive to the challenges facing working families? Because progressives, women, people of color, and folks who have experienced poverty are dramatically disadvantaged in our current campaign finance system.
What’s most frustrating is that while the vast majority of voters agree on campaign finance solutions that would engender true representation and enable structural change, special interests are holding our government hostage by abusing the very campaign finance system folks like me are fighting to fix.
Polling of general election voters across dozens of battleground districts in 2018 found that 75 percent of battleground voters listed “ending the culture of corruption in Washington” as “very important,” the highest percentage of any issue polled including traditional high scorers like “protecting Social Security and Medicare” and “making healthcare affordable and reducing Rx costs.”
Support for campaign finance reform shouldn’t be controversial. I’m running in one of the hottest battlegrounds in the country, and my anti-corruption and campaign finance agenda both excites voters on the left and wins over voters in the middle. And you don’t just have to take my word for it, the broad national support for reform is evidenced by unanimous House Democratic Caucus support for H.R. 1 - 116, the For the People Act, a landmark campaign finance reform and anti-political corruption package.
The first step to creating a truly representative democracy is fixing the way campaigns are funded. Americans agree on so many issues, from common-sense gun safety measures to reducing prescription drug costs, but the only way to realize change is to lockout special interests, and that requires campaign finance reform.
Candace Valenzuela (@Candacefor24) is a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Texas’s 24th district.