Conner Eldridge Quotes

We need to end unlimited, unaccountable money for all political parties by passing comprehensive campaign finance reform.

Nobody wants campaign finance reform more than me. It would save me a fortune.

Campaign finance reform is vital. It is impossible for us to win, especially in committees, because we can never outbid the opposition.

As long as we, in the United States, continue to insist that our politicians have to spend all of their time raising millions of dollars for television ads, it will be corrupt. If we leave it up to the politicians to clean up lobbying and finance reform, nothing is going to change.

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.

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.

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.

My issue with campaign finance is 100 percent disclosure. Wear a suit with patches from your big contributors. Depending on the size of the contribution, that's how big the patch should be.

One of the biggest issues for me is campaign finance reform.

We have to talk about the way we finance campaigns.

I would do away with super PACs. I think it's a cancer.

Unfortunately, money in politics is an insidious thing - and a loophole in our campaign finance system was taken advantage of with money going to existing or new 527 groups with the sole purpose of influencing the election.

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

But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating.

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

It starts with campaign finance reform.

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

The Federal campaign contribution limit of $2,500 is way too low. You can’t even buy a Democrat for $2,500.

Our democratic system is slowly being corroded and eroded by the influence of PAC money.

Not since the gilded age has our politics been opened so wide to corporate contribution and donations from secret sources.

Most important of all the structural reforms, we need to follow through on the recent Congressional effort to discipline the use of money in politics, by setting reasonable limits on campaign spending, limiting and publicizing individual and organizational gifts and channeling much more of the money (including … all general election spending) through the respective party committees rather than through individual candidates’ treasuries.

Spending limits have proven a monumental failure at limiting campaign spending in presidential elections, merely diverting the money underground.

That would be the biggest shake-up Washington ever had, if big money didn't dictate who the candidates were and who got elected.

More money is being spent on our elections, with less disclosure of where that money is coming from, than ever before.

Until we make campaigns affordable, then we're going to have too many members of Congress out rattling the cup with special interest groups.