Reclaim the American Dream

Raleigh, NC – The moment of truth has come for North Carolina, which epitomizes the nation’s mounting struggle over the partisan rigging of elections by Republican or Democratic majorities in state legislatures gerrymandering election districts to maintain their party’s lock on power. Fifteen states have adopted some kind of reform to make the drawing of […]

Washington – The 2018 elections may be a mixed bag for Democrats and Republicans but this has been a boom year for grass roots political reformers, whose jackpot was the powerful WethePeople backlash in seven states against partisan gerrymandering. Citizen rebellions in five states – Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Colorado and Utah – forced referendums and […]

Washington – What gets lost in the partisan passions in the homestretch of American elections is that political reforms to make our democracy fairer and more open are also on the ballot, thanks mostly to grass roots activists sick of the hyper-partisan warfare in Washington and tired of We the People being shut out of […]

Washington -If you suspect that politicians are rigging American elections to keep themselves In power, take a close look at Ohio. Or if you think gerrymandering doesn’t matter, check the track record this decade, which shows that Republicans have been gaining at least 16 and up to 22 extra seats in the House of Representatives […]

Washington – The key takeaway from the super-heated battle for Georgia’s 6th Congressional district, where Republican veteran Karen Handel beat Democratic neophyte Jon Ossoff, is that partisan gerrymandering is king. It swings elections more powerfully and reliably than a flood of MegaMoney. Democrats and their supposedly “independent” Super-PACS turned this special election into the most […]

Washington – From its raw beginnings to its stunning finale, the presidential campaign of 2016 has been a political earthquake, a broad populist rebellion that has shattered the landscape of power within both major political parties. The entire narrative of this campaign has been driven by a revolt from the bottom up, by two candidates […]

Washington –  SuperPACs in 2016 were  breaking records  once again – close to $1.6 billion raised – but there was a new twist. Instead of putting top priority on the presidential race, SuperPACs, political parties and independent donors poured more money into the battle for control of the Senate – $616 million, plus millions more to be […]

[Editors Note: Grass roots reform movements are the untold story of Campaign 2016 and so I wrote this OpEd for The New York Times, which ran it recently in the Sunday Review.] WASHINGTON — In this tumultuous election year, little attention has focused on the groundswell of support for political reform across grass-roots America. Beyond Bernie […]

Washington – The untold story of Campaign 2016 is that political reform is on the move in grass roots America. Not just Bernie Sanders’s trumpet call for a political revolution, but citizen movements at the state level pressing for political reforms against Citizens United, partisan gerrymandering and dark money to make elections fairer, ease gridlock in […]

Washington – If you’re tempted to think campaign MegaMillions no longer matter because maverick Republican Donald Trump is self-financed and Bernie Sanders has funded a nationwide rebellion with two million small donors, take a look down-ballot. MegaMoney is flooding into a high stakes battle for control of Congress. SuperPAC war chests and the lava of […]