News Clips

“When someone sees industry leaders are able to, not even have a seat at the table but actually pay for the table, that doesn’t speak well for how policy decisions are going to be made,” said Beth Rotman, director of money in politics and ethics for Common Cause.  Pointing to next week’s fundraiser for Parson, Rotman said things don’t have to be illegal or corrupt in order to be problematic. “In many instances it’s clear,” she said, “to get the face time, to get the phone call returned, to get the one-on-one conversation, it requires these campaign contributions.”

“I can’t fully support a boycott within Georgia,” said Aunna Dennis, the executive director of the Georgia chapter of Common Cause. “The boycott hurts the working-class person. But corporations do need to be held accountable on where they put their dollars.”

Few names have emerged as potential successors to Stivers, in part because all House districts will be redrawn to reflect the results of the 2020 census. Ohio is also “very, very likely” to lose a seat when the House is reapportioned, according to Catherine Turcer of Common Cause Ohio.

“Those are the people I feel have been dishonored by the path that the Illinois General Assembly has now chosen,” said Jay Young, executive director of Common Cause Illinois. “It should be the job of our elected officials to sort of recognize that this challenge exists, to recognize that they’re not going to be able to draw the district lines with any degree of specificity, they’re not going to be able to draw equal districts.”

In our democracy, we deserve to have political debates based in truth, but as we saw in the 2020 election, Americans are increasingly dealt a deluge of disinformation that comes at them in all forms: online, television ads, and from politicians and our elected officials themselves. If we are going to have a real democracy that is truly of, by, and for the people, then we need solutions and accountability to combat the growing cancer of disinformation. We can start with a bill moving through Congress right now: the For the People Act.

"This bill is anti-democratic, anti-voter, and once again, demonstrates how far current leadership is willing to go to protect their own partisan interests," the nonpartisan government watchdog group Common Cause Texas said.