It's Fair Elections Action Week
 Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Think political campaigns are costing too much money?  You're not alone.  At last count (the last campaign spending disclosure period), the Democratic presidential candidates - both present and former - had spent $391.9 million; and the Republican presidential candidates had spent $299.5 million.  Since it's Fair Elections Week, we thought we'd post these totals for everyone to get an idea of how much money has been funneled from the public and into presidential campaigns this election.

Barack Obama	$154,767,643	Mitt Romney	$103,820,052
Hillary Clinton	$135,828,257	Rudy Giuliani	$56,793,731
John Edwards	$45,906,115	John McCain	$56,657,944
Bill Richardson	$22,887,736	Ron Paul	$28,735,134
Christopher Dodd	$15,004,617	Fred Thompson	$22,901,877
Joe Biden	$10,552,631	Mike Huckabee	$15,271,687
Dennis Kucinich	$4,427,828	Tom Tancredo	$6,709,482
Thomas Vilsack	$2,074,524	Sam Brownback	$4,207,846
Mike Gravel	$524,129	Duncan Hunter	$2,539,906
		Tommy Thompson	$1,210,742
		Jim Gilmore	$376,339
		Alan Keyes	$281,204
Democratic Total	$391,973,480	Republican Total	$299,505,944
GRAND TOTAL: over 691.4 million dollars Source: opensecrets.org

This is over half a billion dollars.  With this much money at stake, and the incessant coverage and airtime the "frontrunner" candidates have received in the mainstream media over the last year, what's left in these last months leading up to November seems more of a soap opera drama than anything else, as the major issues have been covered ad infinitum.

These figures do not even include March's spending, which candidates are due to report by April 20th.

Sadly, it isn't much different for the Senate.

According to a representative from Common Cause, a nonprofit and nonpartisan citizen's lobbying organization, those that profit the most from the skyrocketing cost of campaigns are not the candidates, nor their consultants:  It's the broadcasting industry that pockets 52 cents of every dollar - more than half the money - spent on the average Senate campaign.

Assistant Senate Majority Leader Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) have introduced the Fair Elections Now Act, a bipartisan bill hoping to bring cleaner elections to the U.S. Senate.  Common Cause is hosting a public petition in support of the bill, which currently has 18,358 of the 20,000 signature goal.


1.  Presidential Campaigns:  It's never too late:  send this petition (or your own custom message) to presidential candidates telling them to Stop The Money Chase and put the voters first.

2.  Write your Representatives in the House and the Senate with your own custom message on what changes you would like to see introduced.

3.  Bookmark Common Cause and check back to keep up to date on the many causes they work hard on.  Here are just a few:  standing up for the rights of individual voters; helping to bring funding back to public broadcasting and fighting big media consolidation; protecting freedom of speech and net neutrality on the internet.

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