Pierre Salinger Quotes

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

When candidates have asked me for support before, they have asked for more than a check.

There were 14,000 people at the rally for the president in Ohio. There were another 8,000 people in Virginia. If all 22,000 of those people opened their wallets and gave $1,000 each, that would be less than one donation from a billionaire to the super PACs. And that's why he's in for the fight of his life.

Eventually, money wins in politics.

The cost of fielding a candidate has become so astronomical that the concept of a people’s candidate is just an abstraction.

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.

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

The donor party is the 2 million people who contribute more than $5000 to political candidates. Unless you are elected by the donor party, you cannot run for major office.

We have to talk about the way we finance campaigns.

Trump is not a fan of fundraising, but he's willing to do it.

The AFL-CIO giving money to the Democratic Party has all the appearances of dinosaurs mating.

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

We have to have campaign contributions to apprise the public about our qualifications.

Congressman are spending too much time raising money.

It challenges a linguist to define modern campaign contributions as something other than bribery.

So long as politicians need millions to win a seat in Congress and nearly a billion to contest the White House, they will sanctify the methods needed to raise such sums.

In many cases they [members of congress] go outside their district [to raise money.] They in effect trade policy positions for money. Then they go back to their districts and use the money to run campaigns on a nonpolicy basis.

We’re going to the same people. Virtually all of my major donors are the same as their [the Democratic National Committee] major donors …. I can never compete with the President of the United States or the First Lady.

[In the 1924 presidential election, campaign contributions from workers to the senator were not as high as had been hoped for by the campaign staff. Those pay checks are all that stand between starvation for those workers and their families. You are asking too much of them.

You can’t get to be an officeholder in America without buying television time.

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.

Redistricting makes the inequities in campaign financing even worse. Most elections are so noncompetitive due to how the lines are drawn that big donors already know who's going to win. So they give to the likely winners to curry favor.

Rubio and these other Republican candidates are coming to New York to raise money. I don’t think any senator or congressman who voted against aid for Hurricane Sandy should get one nickel from New York. [They] have the balls to come in and say, ‘We screwed you, now make us president?’

The men and women who now run for Congress have special features. Most of them are much wealthier than their constituents. Surprisingly few have strong policy interests or experience. Most are willing to spend a day or two or three each week asking strangers for money on the telephone, a demeaning but obligatory exercise. Most have internalized an ethical code that allows them to solicit campaign contributions from people directly affected by legislation they vote on. This is not rare or even unusual — it’s standard

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