Kim Campbell Quotes

If the United States really wanted to increase political diversity, it would provide the option for candidates to run with public funds.

As dismayed as Americans are with the influence of the special interests that finance election campaigns, they've been reluctant to embrace the alternative: taxpayer-financed elections.

Public [campaign] financing and free television time are the things that will diminish the high influence that money has on politics.

We have to talk about the way we finance campaigns.

One of the greatest challenges of democracies today is the question of financing campaigns. It's a tremendous challenge. Obviously I think the solution is to have the governments pay for all the campaigns and not to have any private contributions.

It's important not to limit the amount of their own money that candidates can spend, but to give other people access to enough money to run competitive races.

All elections revolve around and are often resolved by who raises the most money. That's unfair. I'd like to see that process changed, but it seems once you win and get to Congress, that doesn't happen.

Democracy, if it meant what our forefathers said, that would be great, but unfortunately it's been corrupted by this funding and funding of campaigns. There's a much better way to do it. There could be a small amount of money given by every taxpayer to be dedicated to candidates.

The goal of limiting campaign contributions is to find that line between contributions that are so high that a candidate feels beholden to a donor and contribution levels that are so low that a non-incumbent candidate has little chance of making an effective race.

We have become part-time Senators and full time fund-raisers. Even the schedule of the Senate itself is now arranged around the need to raise money for the next political campaign, rather than around the need to solve the nation's problems and do the people's business.

The only way a challenger can compete with the built-in advantages of incumbency is to spend money.

The campaign finance law is so intricate that I can’t figure it out.

Dependence on private money to run campaigns causes pain to Republicans and Democrats alike - and business owners. It's time we did something about it. And public financing of elections should be the first step.

The key to fixing public financing is to free politics from big money.

Public financing would fix campaign donor problems.

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.

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

In fact, corporate and union moneys go overwhelmingly to incumbents, so limiting that money, as Congress did in the campaign finance law, may be the single most self-denying thing that Congress has ever done.

Call-time has renewed my faith in the need for public financing of elections. 'Call-time' is where I as the candidate, sit in a room with my 'call-time manager,' and a phone. Then I call people and ask them for money. For hours. Apparently, I'm really good at it.

I'm asking regular folks to be my super PAC.

People have their constitutional right to contribute to a campaign and if they have discretionary money that they want to contribute to a candidate, whether a Republican or a Democrat, they should be able to do so.

I certainly want campaign finance reform. I just wish this would do it in a way that would stand up to a constitutional challenge.

You now have six-year campaigns for the Senate - you never stop running. It's not uncommon for a member of the Senate to have a fundraising breakfast, a fundraising lunch and a fundraising dinner, and then when the Senate breaks for the week to go home, more fundraisers. And that's driven by the cost of campaigning.

If you create a system that makes the small donors the linchpin of the system in terms of how members of Congress directly raise the funds for their campaigns, then it gives everyday citizens much more of a role - a leveraging role - in the funding of those campaigns.

Remember, the first presidential candidate to reject public financing for both the primary and general election was... Barack Obama, in 2008. He did it, in spite of a flat pledge to the contrary, because his campaign saw that it could vastly outspend John McCain.