Deborah Tannen Quotes

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

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

The way you have to campaign in this country is you have to beg for money from the very people who need to be brought under control.

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

Campaign contributors are operating vicariously through the power of their purse rather than through the power of their ideas.

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.

Research who your politicians are, even; know what they do, know who they're supported by legislatively, and know who is supporting them financially for their campaigns. Because ever since Citizens United, we've seen a massive growth in the amount of campaign contributions and corruption in politics as a result, and that has to change.

When it comes to federal elections law, Tom DeLay and his special-interest friends live by one set of rules, and everyone else lives by a very different set.

The reality is that asking the public to fund political campaigns accomplishes nothing. Candidates continue to seek interest-group support through other channels, both financial and in-kind, and corruption problems abound.

The degree to which campaigns have become dominated by marketing is breaking the spirit of democracy, and we're all just so sick of it, across party lines.

Spending limits not only do not work, they have the perverse effect of making special interests more powerful and more influential.

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.

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 distorts the democratic process in a fundamental way.

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.

Challengers do not have a level playing field.

The most misguided, naïve, uninformed, egregious decision of the United States Supreme Court … in the 21st century. To somehow view money as not having a corrupting effect on an election flies in the face of reality. I just think that just one of the five had run for county sheriff. I guarantee you … there will be scandals. There is too much money washing around political campaigns today, and it will take scandals and maybe the Supreme Court will go back and revisit this issue

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.

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

This [political fundraising] is a very sophisticated system … This is a legalized bribery system where no one has to say anything. I don’t have to say what I want—you [the politician] know what I want.

This Court now concludes that independent [political] expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

I contribute to public candidate campaigns, and there's a federal limit on how much you can contribute to each individual candidate. I obey the law in that regard, and I feel like I'm doing it properly.