Today, July 4th, the anniversary of the day in which our founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, is also the final day of a crowdfunding campaign to raise $12mm for a Super PAC to fund campaign finance reform.
This campaign is called MayDay and the person behind it is Larry Lessig.
The idea is to use the $12mm to make campaign finance reform the fundamental issue in five high profile congressional races and win them.
If that works, then May Day PAC will crowdfund a much larger amount in 2016 and do this again in a lot more races.
Larry’s assertion is that the vast majority of americans want big money out of government, but the small number of people with the big money don’t want that to happen and they are calling the shots now.
He believes that the best way to fix that is for everyone with small amounts of money to come together and put together some big money and go toe to toe with them.
I think it is an interesting idea and when Larry raised the first $1mm from the crowd, the Gotham Gal and I participated in the small group that matched the first $1mm. We can and do write big checks to politicians because that’s the way our corrupt system of government works right now. We are happy to write big checks to change that system and make it right.
The second part of the crowdfunding campaign is seeking to raise $5mm and then get that matched in the same way the first $1mm was matched.
With one day to go, the campaign is short by about $1.5mm. It would be amazing if the american public celebrated July 4th by coming up with the final $1.5mm.
If you are so inclined, you can help do that here.
