BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including False Dilemma, Representativeness Heuristic, and Hasty Generalization, with Politically Left Leaning Bias as the most egregious example at 22.2% saturation with 124 hits. Analysis detected 1,484 faulty-reasoning hits from 558 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 86.8% and a BS Rank of 92% (1,701 of 20,496 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 91.70% of the article peer group.
Every now and again, the politicos of San Antonio will chatter about the need for local politics to open itself to more campaign cash.
They’ll argue that our city charter’s limit on individuals only being able to donate $500 and $1000 to mayoral candidates per campaign cycle, hinders local candidates’ chances of success and therefore our local political trajectory.
I disagree.
As a first-time candidate who comes from a working-class background with no familial political connections, I had to maintain a full-time job during my campaign to pay my bills.
My campaign relied almost entirely on volunteers, friends, and family, and a lot of my own sweat and tears.
I made (and kept) a commitment to not take a cent of corporate or real estate Political Action Committee (PAC) dollars because I believe local candidates should be free of that influence on their decision making.
That meant that to afford mailing out campaign flyers, purchasing signs and door hangers, maintaining a website, and paying the folks who worked on my campaign, I had to fundraise from everyday residents — with the $500 per person donation limit.
So, I did.
And I focused on recruiting volunteers to knock on doors, make calls, and reach every voter possible.
And guess what?
A 24-year-old candidate and volunteers knocked on over 15,000 doors, raised over $50,000, and won a local election to represent the neighborhood he grew up in.
Was it tough?
Absolutely.
But that’s the work candidates should do to represent their communities.
Enabling candidates to rake in more money from those with significant means or political connections only requires candidates to spend more time talking to donors instead of voters, and potentially binds their hands on major decisions once elected.
Is campaign work expensive?
Yes.
But in a city where nearly half of our residents struggle to afford housing and other everyday costs, raising the individual campaign donation limits in our local elections will only enable the wealthy and politically connected to dump more money into campaigns, leaving our working families, renters, and seniors on fixed incomes with less influence on who represents them at City Hall.
The everyday voter’s $25 donation to a candidate they really believe in becomes less valuable when the opposing candidate is raising thousands of dollars a day from a handful of this city’s most influential local lobbyists.
Candidates will spend more time competing with their opponents to secure top donors so they can pump out more mailers, digital ads, and polls, instead of talking to voters about what is important to them.
A working person wanting to run for city council will likely have to turn to the political consultants, the lobbyists, and the regular campaign donors of our city to compete with the mountain of campaign cash their opponents will raise.
This is not how elections in a democratic-representative form of local government should work.
If City Council is going to review our local campaign finance laws, we should keep the donation limits where they are at, limit shadowy PAC spending, and consider a public campaign finance system that can match small dollar donors for their contributions to local candidates, instead of strengthening the political power of the wealthiest and most well connected people in our city.
Money should not determine our elections.
Our residents should.
Speakers
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Analysis
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