So the nation’s highest court has decided money is speech and corporations are people. Here’s a thought: don’t vote for anyone who tries to “buy the pot.”
During the 2012 presidential election cycle, gazillionaire Sheldon Adelson set records for the amount of money he put into the Republican run for the White House. Republicans lost. It can be done.
Years ago I sat down to play penny poker with my son. He figured out early he could “buy the pot,” raising the bet until I could no longer play. Since then, I have a rule. I don’t play with, or vote for, players who buy the pot.
And it’s got little to do with party. A certain Democrat running for Pennsylvania governor this year has been trying to buy that pot for months, using his personal wealth to out-voice candidates who must be a bit more careful with the financial resources at their command. A survey out today indicates nearly two-thirds of Democratic voters have seen a gubernatorial ad on TV, and 85 percent of those have seen Tom Wolf.
It’s good strategy on Wolf’s part, and he may be the best the party has to offer against Republican incumbent Tom Corbett, R-Marcellus. But it doesn’t seem right to have one candidate shut out the others just because he has the personal wealth to do it and they do not.
Maybe the rest of us need to find another way to measure candidates than by how much TV time they can buy without our help.