Them's the Rules

Way way back (20 years ago) the magazine Computer Gaming World had a monthly poll of which were the most popular games. Anyone could fill out the form and mail it in and the magazine totaled up the votes and listed the result. Many months 20 - 30% of the votes were postmarked Hunts Valley, MD which just happened to be the location of MicroProse, one of the major game companies.

When they wrote an article about the obvious ballot stuffing one of the employees of MicroProse wrote a letter to the editor that basically said, you made the rules and we followed them. And he was right.

With that lets first go into the Angelique Espinoza issue, as covered in today's Camera editorial.

1. We are a nation of laws, not men (meant in a gender-neutral way). The law says that each LLC can write a check. So there is nothing wrong in accepting those checks. After all, many husbands & wives send a combined $200.00 yet in most cases it's one of them that asks the other to double up their contribution.
2. If a candidate can be bought for $500.00 the problem is not the $500.00 donation, it's the fact that we have a potential council-member that will sell out so cheap. If people thing Angelique can be bought for $500.00 - lets discuss that. If not, then why is this an issue?
3. With that said, I do think the law should be changed to only allow contributions from individuals. And possibly only from registered voters in the City of Boulder. Most contributions do match that requirement and we do have matching funds. But this is an interesting question because candidates with large families here in Boulder then have an advantage.
4. Contributions tend not so much to buy candidates (numerous Republicans in Congress excepted) as they tend to go to candidates that already hold positions the donor likes. The contributions are indicative of how DellaCava thinks Angelique will vote on development issues and that is a fair inference.

Since we're on the topic of following the money, lets take another little trip along the financing trail. This trip starts at the Boulder Mountainbike Alliance and a $15,000.00 donation from Wonderland Hill Development Company, the company developing the Washington School project. From there we travel to the City Clerk's page listing the BMA's $2,025.15 in campaign expenses supporting 7 candidates.

Does this mean that Macon Cowles, Angelique Espinoza, Crystal Gray, Adam Massey, Lisa Morzel, Susan Osborne, and Ken Wilson are therefore all unfairly getting ~ $300.00 each from Wonderland? And is this any different from the DellaCava donation?

After all, what if we have the "DellaCava Improve the Environment Association" and it runs ads on behalf of the candidates it endorses? Money is fungible and so it can always find a way to the candidates.

But we may want to require that any group spending money on the election must show it's list of donors. Because it's the reporting that brings out this issue.