According to an article in the Des Moines Register, Waterloo lawyer Bruce Braley is expected to raise more money than his two opponents for the Democratic nomination in Iowa’s First Congressional district.
I’m not sure whether possessing a keen gift for the obvious is a qualifier or disqualifier for Congress, but lawyer Braley certainly has it.
“I don’t think it’s the money itself” that makes a difference, said Braley, who was expected to have added about $100,000 in the first three months of 2006 to the pace-setting $391,000 he raised last year. “It’s what the money can do to increase the size of your field operation, media program, and to get voters out on June 6.”
Perhaps Mr. Braley’s shrewd observation is a bold first step toward bipartisanship, since I’m confident he can garner widespread support — on both sides of the aisle, among both campaign finance reformers and First Amendment traditionalists — for the proposition that what’s important about money in politics is not “the money itself” but what it can buy.
In the movie “The Jerk”, Navin’s girlfriend gets very upset when she learns they are about to become poor:
“I don’t care about losing all the money, it’s losing all the stuff!”
John, I didn’t know you had a hankering for the campaign finance issue.
Interesting.