Real people, who have a right to be heard, and real issues, are being drowned out by a cacophony of meaningless TV ads
Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race has become the most expensive in U.S. history.
Pat Toomey
To date $118 million has been dumped in to this campaign, which pits incumbent Pat Toomey against political start-up Katie McGinty.
Katie McGinty
Almost $90 million of this amount has been funneled into the McGinty / Toomey race by groups from outside Pennsylvania, according to opensecrets.org.
You cannot turn on your television in Pennsylvania without seeing a vacuous ad from either McGinty or Toomey, each attacking the other.
The stakes are huge, with some saying the outcome of the race could determine the balance of the U.S. Senate.
Senate races – data from OpenSecrets.org
The amount being spent on this campaign is more than $20 million greater than that spent in any other state — $95 million for New Hampshire, and only $83 million in Nevada.
Who’s kicking in this money?
Groups like the labor union AFSCME, which to date has spent $2.8 million opposing Toomey. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has so far kicked in $5.1 million opposing McGinty. And the list goes on and on.
This $7.9 million from AFSCME and the Chamber of Commerce would have been better spent on Pennsylvania schools, or hospitals, or roads — you name it.
The irony is that neither Toomey nor McGinty are particularly well-liked or known in Pennsylvania. And neither seems ready for prime time, or up to the job of representing average citizens.
“I’m not particularly fond of either Toomey, or McGinty,” a professional engineer told me the other day. I hear it often, from all quarters.
While both campaigns are spending like drunken sailors on TV ads, neither candidate seems to be connecting, in a real human sense, with everyday Pennsylvanians.
Contrast this with the late Sen. Arlen Specter, who seemed to rub elbows and know just about everyone in the state.
Even Joe Sestak seemed better known on the ground than either Toomey or McGinty. McGinty, of course, defeated Sestak, in the primary with the help of millions of dollars of outside ad money.
It would seem that Sestak was an early casualty of these outside, and outsized, campaign funds.
But he’s not the only victim.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the average citizen is being devalued by such big money political campaigns.
If you are a candidate who only values, and chases, large contributions from anonymous out-of-staters, your priorities by necessity are turned away from everyday citizens and their everyday problems.
All this of course is the result of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which under the guise of “free speech” opened the floodgates of big money into our political campaigns.
In reality, as we see in Pennsylvania’s 2016 Senate campaign, the voices of average people on the ground can’t be heard because of this deluge of unaccountable campaign cash.
The U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United foolishly equated cash with speech.
In Pennsylvania, in our politics, were starting to pay the real price.
The voices of real people, who have a right to be heard, and real issues, are being drowned out by a cacophony of meaningless TV ads.
The right to free speech should be returned to ordinary Americans
