The No Money Candidate

A rare foray into politics. I promise to limit myself only to optimism about things I know nothing actually of.

A candidate runs for an office without fundraising or putting up any real money of their own (apart from some of the simple stuff like filing fees and the like, just no ads and what not). This becomes there stitch. First of all, I'm saying start small, local government. Go places that want to hear you speak about ideas, post some info online. Don't advertise. But also don't be afraid of or avoid coverage. Convince people and papers and whatever other organs of media to pay attention and they'll start paying attention. Eventually people might come out to see you speak in droves. And then the media will follow. Do it nice and pretty like. Clean and simple.

I feel like something this solid ideologically could have feul behind it. I mean, it isn't the complete avoidance of money or anything. It is just against the idea that a modern compaign is all about money. Sure somebody might wanna buy the volunteers lunch, or even pay the nice fellow who ends up doing all your PA work for you. But none of that should create a system that is so dependent on these concrete funds.

I think, given a certain amount of pragmatism (that amount, granted, is quite small) you could put online (see my honeymoon registery idea) the things the need paying for in your compaign. And people could specifically give money to that item. EG people would contribute money to a specific necessity and not a compaign in general. I mean, I don't want to help fund attack ads. But maybe I do want to fund the electicity bill for cost of running the speakers at a large compaign ralley.

Maybe it's silly. Maybe it is how we'll make a third party that sticks. Ha. But yeah. Still.