Elizabeth Emken Quotes

I'll spend whatever it takes to get my message out and to be competitive with these career politicians. I'm not going to take a penny of special interest money.

I am not the candidate of career politicians in Washington.

In Canada we have limits on campaign spending and public funding of campaigns. This makes it easier for people [candidates] who don't have access to huge amounts of money.

Think about Kennedy. Think about Carter. Think about Clinton. Think about Obama. They've all been in their forties and from outside Washington, or underdogs in one way or another. I just think that Americans are looking everywhere, saying, 'Hey, show me some authenticity. Show me somebody who's practical. Show me people who run things.'

I'm as far outside of the mainstream political establishment as you can get.

It's gotta be hard when you are a newcomer to this kind of thing, this big political scene and you have somebody like Michael Bloomberg come in with hundreds of millions of dollars, dumping it in.

The Sanders campaign showed that a candidate with mildly progressive programs could win the nomination, maybe the election, even without the backing of the major funders or any media support. There's good reason to suppose that Sanders would have won the nomination had it not been for shenanigans of the Obama-Clinton party managers. He is now the most popular political figure in the country by a large margin.

The first iron rule of American politics is Follow the Money. This explains, oh, about 80 percent of what goes on in Washington.

Mississippi's loose campaign finance laws allow lawyers and companies to contribute heavily to the judges they appear before. That is terrible for justice, since the courts are teeming with perfectly legal conflicts of interest.

Frankly, a lot of candidates have no problem being sold to the highest bidder if it means they will win.

Ultimately, much of the dysfunction in Congress is due to the impact of big money, which drowns out the voices of working families and leads to the special treatment of special interests.

America has become the most unequal society among advanced countries, and rich people are now free to spend as much money on political campaigns as they wish.

There can be no clearer indication of how undemocratic the way we finance campaigns is than the fact that only one-quarter of 1% donate $200 or more, and only one-tenth of 1% gives $1,000 or more.

Asking politicians to give up a source of money is like asking Dracula to forsake blood.

There's issue of a corrupt campaign finance system, where big money interests and Wall Street are trying to buy elections.Those are the issues that are resonating.

What I write about is how much influence it's had in things like state legislatures and governorships and congressional races. The other thing that's even more important in the long run is that very extreme money has affected the ecosystem of ideology in the country.

You've got to just follow the money [in Washington]. You see it. There's no countervailing power.

All politicians, even the most idealistic ones, are looking for money, sucking up to rich people.

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.

I saw money change votes.I mean, they just seem unaware of this, that money is something - if they want to see the appearance of corruption, all they had to do was look in Las Vegas last weekend.

Here [in the USA], you have the best laws for freedom of expression. The problem is that expression can be bought by people who don't want you have it. Apparently, true patriotism destroys freedom of expression.

Trump is considered to be an outsider. The establishment doesn't want any part of Trump. They don't want him to succeed. And I would throw some Republicans in that as well. It's just the way Washington works.

I think we need to take on the greed of the billionaire class, a disastrous campaign finance system.

I am committed to curbing the influence of money in our political system.

Donald Trump disproved the notion that there is a direct dollar-for-dollar correlation between how much money you had in your traditional war chest and what your election outcome was going to be.