Critics of Republican Representative Lauren Boebert had something to celebrate on Thursday.
Boebert’s political rival, Adam Frisch, raised $3.4 million for his campaign in the third quarter of 2023, ratcheting up his cash on hand to $4.3 million. The fundraising was backed by more than 100,000 donations with an average of $32, according to a press release from his campaign. The announcement comes after Frisch outpaced Boebert’s fundraising 3-to-1 in the second quarter, when Boebert raised $818,000 to Frisch’s more than $2.6 million.
I don’t like Boebert any more than the next person with an average IQ … she’s an idiot.
But the most disturbing thing about this story is the idea that whoever has the most money gets to be elected.
I have my criticisms about conservatives and I have my disagreements but normalizing the idea that money is what gets people elected should be just as disturbing.
Because if that is so … it isn’t a democracy. It’s something else.
It does strongly correlate but it’s an open question whether the donations cause the win, or more viable candidates attract more donations. Big donors want to garner favor with and gain access to the winner, after all.
How about neither?
Big donors shouldn’t be able to garner favor or gain access to the winner over other interests. And donations certainly shouldn’t cause the win.
It would be great to get money out of politics, but that’s not the way things are. The game must be played as it is if we are to improve the rules to be more fair and less corrupting. Current law is political money = free speech.
There’s also a question of the donors vs. the actual constituency. Boebert is running in a fairly strong-R district. They voted Trump in 2020 and they’ve been electing republicans to her seat for more than a decade. If money is an influencing factor, still Frisch is going to need more than Boebert to win.
The donors, on the other hand, could live anywhere. Every Democrat in this country wants Boebert to lose, whereas Republicans are pretty mixed on her. So of course Frisch is going to get more cash, that doesn’t mean the people who can actually vote for him, those who live in CO-3, will do so.
This doesn’t take into account how close he came to beating her in the last election. Or, at least there’s no mention of it in your comment which suggests that it wasn’t taken into account.
I agree 100%, but at the same time you have to work within the system as it is. Losing races due to taking principled stances about dirty campaign money and purity risks giving victories to fascists. That’s the more immediate problem.
Can’t fix anything without getting elected first