Ben Wilcox
Ben Wilcox
meet pay people
People are still going to meet in restaurants. They may just have to pay their own way.
basically discourage protect rigged system
The system has basically been rigged to protect incumbents and discourage competition.
access basically buy candidate influence money principled supporting whoever
I think that's where you see the real use of money to buy influence because in this case, they're not even principled enough to be supporting one candidate over another. They just want to have access and influence with whoever wins. They're just basically hedging their bets.
chance hands losers people power trying
The losers are the people of Florida. We were trying to get a chance to take some of the power away from the politicians and put it in the hands of the people.
business gets
It's where the real business in Tallahassee gets transacted.
build campaign due potential realistic situation war winning
The most realistic situation could be is that potential challengers don't see the possibility of winning due to the campaign war chests that the incumbents build up.
behind campaigns cost encourage financing hold levels people public
The whole idea behind public financing was to hold down the cost of campaigns and encourage more people to participate. Now they've escalated campaign fund-raising to levels we've never seen.
fooled hard hide imagine people voting
If it's being done just to hide their real vote, I don't think that's the way to go. I find it kind of hard to imagine that there would be that many people that would be fooled by it.
loss voters
It's a loss for the voters of Florida.
across among consensus lines mean party
That's going to mean that there's going to have to be some consensus across party lines and among independents.
ability gather groups initiative process shows shut
It shows their real intent, which is to shut down the initiative process and the ability for groups to gather signatures and put something on the ballot.
charge issue partisan power
It's not a partisan issue, it's a power issue - who's in charge at the time.
among commission consensus key members passes plan ten
The key requirement is that any plan that passes this commission has to pass by ten votes, so you're going to have to have consensus among all these members of the commission for a plan to pass.
drawing florida hoped opportunity people speak whether
We had hoped that the people of Florida would have an opportunity to speak on this question, whether they want self-interested politicians drawing their own districts. We just have to go back to the drawing board.