Group seeks campaign finance reform

COEUR d’ALENE — They want campaign finance reforms, and they want them now.

North Idaho members of liberal-advocacy group MoveOn.org gathered Tuesday at U.S. Rep. Walt Minnick’s Coeur d’Alene office to urge the legislator to sign a pledge to fight corporate corruption in Washington, D.C.

Because Minnick was back in the nation’s capital attending a special session of Congress, the six MoveOn members met with Sarah Worley, Minnick’s regional coordinator of constituent services in Coeur d’Alene.

“These people have already signed the pledge,” said organizer Wayne Christofferson, as he handed Worley a list with 500 signatures from residents of Idaho’s First Congressional District. “That’s a lot of any Congressman’s constituency, especially in a state as sparsely populated as Idaho.”

Crafted late last spring by MoveOn members from across the country, the “Fight Washington Corruption” pledge came together as a response to a January U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which threw out a 63-year-old law that banned campaign donations from corporate treasury funds.

Christofferson said the Citizens United decision gives businesses with big money the same rights as private citizens who can’t compete with that kind of influence.

“It opens the floodgates for corporations to buy elections,” the Coeur d’Alene man said.

Similar gatherings and rallies seeking congressional support for the pledge were planned Tuesday in 400 communities nationwide, Christofferson said.

The North Idaho group had planned a larger local showing of MoveOn members, but scaled it back in order to avoid creating a distraction for drivers along Northwest Boulevard.

The MoveOn pledge calls for three actions: The overturn of the Citizens United court decision through an amendment to the Constitution; passage of the Fair Elections Now Act in Congress, which provides incentives for candidates to collect small donations by offering competitive public matching funds; and new laws that would limit the power of corporate lobbyists.

Worley told the group she has not yet been able to discuss the pledge with the Minnick.

“I know that I can say from Walt’s perspective, absolutely, he’s 100 percent committed to these three planks, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have any question against those at all,” Worley said.

Regarding Minnick’s position on Citizens United, Worley said the congressman has previously gone on the record publicly about it.

“I think he called it once, ‘one of the worst decisions since Dred Scott.’ He seemed appalled by it, so absolutely definitely sympathetic to a call to repeal that,” Worley said.

Coeur d’Alene resident Mo Oliver told Worley that lawmakers like Minnick need to move quickly on this.

“Right now, it’s legal for elections to be bought and sold at high levels, at international levels,” Oliver said. “To me, parties don’t matter on this issue, at all. Many, many people of both parties are adamant that we need to be the ones making the decisions, not the people who are passing lots of money around.”

Christofferson said more than 400,000 people nationwide have already added their names to the pledge.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.