There’s a famous saying that “money is the mother’s milk of politics.” That was coined by Jesse Unruh, an old California Democratic Party boss who died more than thirty years ago.
But Unruh would probably be twirling in his grave if he knew how out of hand spending had gotten. Back in 1976, David Bonior won a hotly contested race for his first term in Congress. Later, he told me he was embarrassed that his campaign had cost the astronomical sum of $36,000 — adjusted for inflation, that’s about $157,000 in today’s money.
By the time he ran for his last term in 2000, Bonior was spending well over a million dollars every two years, which was one reason he decided to leave the House.
Well, today, it might cost over a million dollars to get elected to a piddly term-limited seat on the Michigan state senate. There was even one state house race last year in which spending was over $1.5 million. Things have gotten completely out of hand, and, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the sky seems to be the limit.
And money does talk. In last year’s congressional races, the campaigns with more money behind them won more than 90 percent of the time.
But there are rare, encouraging, David beats Goliath stories, and here’s one. Lake Erie for years has had more pollution problems than any of the other Great Lakes. It is shallower and warmer. Years ago, thanks to industrial pollution, it caught on fire near Cleveland. Then there were enormous problems with human waste. Those things were dealt with, but in recent times the lake has been threatened by giant algae blooms and toxic cyanobacteria in them, a problem which rendered all the water in Toledo unfit to drink for several days five years ago.
This is being caused largely by runoffs of enormous amounts of animal manure and fertilizer from irresponsible farming practices. Because of this, a group of mostly young activists formed a group called Toledoans for Safe Water and started trying to get a Lake Erie Bill of Rights on the ballot. If a corporation should have rights, they concluded, so should nature. They were ridiculed and opposed by the establishment in both political parties. Once they got the signatures, there was a lot of political maneuvering to try and knock their initiative off the ballot.
But that didn’t work, and the courts ordered a special election last month. Campaign finance reports are now in, and we know that a subsidiary of the multi-national oil firm BP spent more than $300,000 to try and defeat the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, mostly by bombarding the airwaves with commercials. Their campaign was largely orchestrated by two Virginia groups run by Mary Cheney, the daughter of the former vice president.
The activists, led by their shy but dynamic young spokesperson, 29-year-old Markie Miller, managed to raise less than six thousand dollars. The contest was totally unequal, and so was the result. But it wasn’t what you might have expected.
By an astonishing landslide, more than 61 percent of the voters said yes to the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. In what she finds even more unbelievable, Markie Miller was then asked to speak about this on Earth Day at the United Nations in New York.
There are still battles to be fought; farm interests and the state of Ohio are fighting to have the bill of rights declared unconstitutional. “Whatever happens, we have made waves across the globe. The idea that water is only available to those who can afford to obtain it is not a reality we are willing to accept quietly,” she said.
I don’t know about you, but the idea that a group of kids from Toledo beat big oil money and the Cheneys is enough to make me smile for a week.
