Christie Hefner Quotes

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.

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.

I think it is wrong to spend $4 or $5 million in a campaign.

Money is speech. It's incongruous to say a multimillionaire can spend as much on his own campaign as he wants, but you can only give $2,300. His free speech rights are different from yours, thus violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. It's absurd.

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.

While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

Spending for congressional campaigns is getting to be like the arms race.

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

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

So I think that if we want to have a Congress, if we want to have government that looks like America, if we want to have government that is truly a representative Democracy, then we need to clearly address how we get our campaign laws out of the way of Democracy.

Our only real hope for democracy is that we get the money out of politics entirely and establish a system of publicly funded elections.

Ultimately, the question of campaign contributions will be decided by the public.

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.

There's nothing in the First Amendment that even remotely talks about spending money for political contests, and to say that an individual can spend as much of his or her own money as he or she wants constitutionally without any limitation, I think is just absurd.

When I first came to Congress, the party was supposed to help you. Now, when a new member is sworn in, he or she is told what their dues are - how much they are expected to raise for the party for the next election. It's worse in the Senate. It turns the whole place into a money machine.

And, you know, money is - the money edge is really dangerous to democracy. Because what you have right now - people have said to me that, look, you'll always be outspent, so how can you ever win?

I do not believe wealthy candidates should spend vast resources in their own campaigns.

The cost of congressional and presidential campaigns has been leaping every two or four years. I think this year it will be 60 percent more than 1996; well over twice as much as in 1992 in the presidential and congressional races.

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.

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.

The American system of political spending is so unregulated that it might make Adam Smith rethink free markets.

Not only the candidate should not be required, he should not be permitted, to incur any but a limited and trifling expense for his election.

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

All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law.

History’s pendulum is now swinging back toward the day when political finances were only lightly regulated.