Mario Cuomo Quotes

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

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

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 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.

It is not that candidates who get the most money win, but that winning candidates get the most money.

It is campaign money that calls the tune, a fact recognized by every politician within a few minutes after getting into politics.

American politics is money and thirty second spots.

It's obscene how money is driving politics.

Politics has become unbelievably and unfortunately way too much about how much money is involved rather than what kind of ideas are involved.

Anyone who has been around Washington politics long enough can't avoid this truism: Election-year money is like a rushing river that invariably finds cracks in any dam the reformers erect.

A million dollars in the presidential election is a spit in the ocean. It's not a lot of money.

Well, the role of money in politics is pretty corrupting right now.

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

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.

Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.

I can tell you that too much money is corrupting American politics. Don't blame the American public. The U.S. Supreme Court has a lot to answer for, because it has made it impossible for Congress to reduce the corrupting influence of money on American political life.

Well I think money has been going into political campaigns for a very long time.

Money in politics is a huge issue.

Big money is ruining the political system.

Even though Senator Cranston was one of the most liberal members of the Senate, most of the time I was with him he was on the phone asking rich men for money….His ideals were as wonderful as any, but at the end of the day, he was still beholden to money.

A $5,000 campaign contribution to a member of Congress will hardly get you a thank you these days.

Large sums of money really unbalance the democratic process.

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.

Special interests and Congress are too closely connected and the ties that bind are the millions spent on campaigns.

Money in politics is like ants in your kitchen. You close all the holes and get them all out or they'll find their way in again.