Election Finance Quotes

I was deep into it - worldwide liberation politics as well as domestic - but by the end of the '80s, I had decided it all comes down to one single issue: campaign-finance elimination.

Spending limits have proven a monumental failure at limiting campaign spending in presidential elections, merely diverting the money underground.

The political battle is between big money combines who spend a thousand pounds or more on every constituency they fight… when they speak democracy, they don't mean government by the people...they mean financial democracy, in which money counts and nothing but money.

There can only be democracy when money is not allowed to be spent in Politics.

After the 1970s, when President Nixon's illegal campaign cash was used as a secret slush fund to pay for the Watergate burglary and cover-up, Americans have demanded to know where the money fueling our elections is coming from.

The Media are corporations so... It's the concentrations of private power which have an enormous, not total control, but enormous influence over Congress and the White House and that's increasing sharply with sharp concentration of private power and escalating cost of elections and so on.

If we must have campaign contributions, this is the way to raise them. If you would start this method now, you would begin a tremendous reform.

I don't think anyone's pushing for spending limits in the campaign.

You don’t get campaign contributions just because it’s a philanthropic endeavor.

It is one thing to talk about fundraising and another to do it as a candidate, and I have learned so much about how much money it costs to run a campaign and what it means to raise money.

I think we have to look at the whole way campaigns are financed. The No. 1 problem is PAC and special-interest money.

Nobody wants campaign finance reform more than me. It would save me a fortune.

I think the idea of getting money out of politics is critical.

Presidential money is almost like the housing bubble. It's growing at such an astronomical rate, you think it can't get any bigger.

It is now clear that giving to a candidate’s PAC is equivalent to giving to his campaign; the leaders of the PAC are, for all practical purposes, are the campaign’s bag men.

In fact, not only do I support eliminating soft money, but I support full public financing for campaigns.

[Donald Trump] doesn't have the money to run commercials and I launched into a tirade on money in politics.

In the United States 95% of the people who win elections have the most money. That's it. So, money is a big part of elections. But that happens all the time.

For many years, we have had these campaign finance reforms, and they have been failures. Money is more coursing through our system than ever before. Incumbents have used the laws to advantage themselves. And one of the reasons I think they have been failures is we have tried to crush down the money in places like the political parties, and it has squished out into opaque super PACs and sort of hidden channels.

If Republicans want to defend the rights of corporations and billionaires to spend unlimited, secret money in campaigns, then they should say so.

The best way to shine a light on all of this 'dark money' flooding into our elections would be for Congress to pass legislation requiring all organizations to disclose their political spending in a timely manner.

More money is being spent on our elections, with less disclosure of where that money is coming from, than ever before.

We need to prioritize ending the influence of corporate special interests and secret money on politicians by limiting the amount of money they can spend on political campaigns.

There's no doubt that there's a public backlash against the way campaign money is raised, but I don't think the only alternative is to elect people with money.

One of the things I care about a lot is public financing in elections.