David came to this country as a Dreamer at the age of 14 – crossing the border with his sister on his back, as they escaped political turmoil in their native Guatemala. David and his family settled in Southern California, where his mother worked as a janitor, and his father, a carpenter. He learned English in public schools, before earning scholarships to Stanford and Harvard law. As a young man, he came out to his family and friends, and he is now married to his husband of 20 years.
There is a reason we don’t have Medicare for All, a Green New Deal or a true Living Wage.
The billionaires and corporations keep buying our elections.
You see it in your mailbox and on your screens in this election for Assembly, with more than a million dollars already spent for the corporate candidates and attacking our grassroots campaign.
I am proud to be the only corporate-free candidate in the race for Assembly – and honored that such a broad range of community groups and leaders have joined our cause, including the Sierra Club, the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, the BAR, Bay Guardian, California Nurses, classroom teachers, Mark Leno, Tom Ammiano and so many others.
But rejecting corporate contributions is only the beginning. We need to keep the corporations and billionaires from using “dark money” to buy our elections. In our campaign for Assembly, we are not accepting any corporate contributions and have accepted the voluntary overall spending limit.
But the corporations can spend any amount – and they are. Their slick ads are designed to look authentic, but an unlimited reservoir of corporate profits fund those ads and mailers with one goal in mind – keeping control of our politics.
We need bold ideas to break the stranglehold of unlimited corporate money – and here is mine.
In the Assembly, I will propose a “Truth Fee” be assessed on every dollar spent by outside groups trying to buy our elections. I would like to ban them outright, but at the moment, Supreme Court rulings make that impossible. But it is legal to impose reasonable rules and I propose we require 25 cents of every dollar spent by outside dark money groups and these so-called “Independent Expenditures” go into a fund to counter their lies. (I would propose more honestly, but we have to withstand a legal challenge, so this is real, not political rhetoric).
All of the funds would go to fact-checking and providing funds to respond to attacks – so the billionaires and corporations would no longer be able to buy our elections with impunity.
This is just one way to change California – but it is vital. We won’t win Medicare for All, a Green New Deal and a true living wage if the corporations and billionaires keep buying our elections.
We can’t stop their spending (at least with this Supreme Court). But we can counter their lies – and make them pay for it.