A bipartisan problem solver, Schroder is rejecting corporate PAC money
Rep. Chabot has taken over $3 million from corporate PACs over the course of his political career
End Citizens United (ECU) and Let America Vote (LAV) today endorsed Kate Schroder for Congress in Ohio’s First Congressional District. A health advocate who has fought for her community her entire career, Schroder is proving to Ohioans that she’ll work to reform Washington by rejecting corporate PAC money.
The endorsement coincides with End Citizens United’s naming of Rep. Steve Chabot (OH-01) to the Big Money 20, the group’s top targets to defeat in 2020. ECU’s Big Money 20 campaign is focused on defeating incumbents who are rigging the system for their own benefit and to favor their big money donors. The campaign will expose this corruption by showing voters how politicians like Rep. Chabot consistently put the interests of their corporate donors ahead of the lives of their constituents.
“Kate Schroder has been a tireless healthcare advocate and public servant, transforming broken systems and making them work for Ohio families,” said ECU and LAV President Tiffany Muller. “In her run for Congress, Schroder is listening to Ohioans and proving that she can’t be bought because she’s not taking a dime of corporate PAC money. Representative Steve Chabot has turned his back on Ohioans, choosing to protect Big Pharma and mega-donors by voting for the 2017 GOP tax bill. We’re proud to endorse Kate Schroder and help her defeat Steve Chabot.”
“The strength of our democracy depends on the integrity of our elections,” said Kate Schroder. “Right now, the outsized influence of corporate special interests is putting our elections in jeopardy and drowning out the voices of Ohioans. I’m running to serve Ohio families and no one else. I’m honored to receive ECU and LAV’s endorsement, and I look forward to working alongside them to get our government working for the people.”
The Big Money 20 campaign aims to educate voters about incumbents who represent the worst of Washington corruption and rally support for reforming the political system. The members of the Big Money 20 are incumbents who take money from corporate special interests, mega-donors, and industries like Big Pharma and Big Oil and then put those interests ahead of their constituents.
During Steve Chabot’s 25 years in Congress, he has taken over $3 million from corporate donors and enriched his own family along the way. From 2011-2017, Chabot’s campaign paid his son in law’s company more than $150,000 for website design and other Internet services, an arrangement good government groups said smacked “of nepotism and self-dealing.” Between 2011 and 2016, Chabot spent nearly $200,000 of taxpayer dollars to fly to 46 different countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and Costa Rica. The Small Business Committee, which paid for some of the trips and which Steve Chabot chaired, “disclosed neither their intent nor their outcomes” in flying Chabot around the world. Chabot has taken over $100,000 from Big Pharma and health insurance industries, and voted for the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which would gut protections for preexisting conditions and impose an “age tax” that would allow insurers to charge older customers five times more than young adults. In 2015, Chabot introduced a bill that practically everyone in Congress, including his Republican colleagues, opposed but his donors supported, making it easier for big companies to exploit migrants and drive down American wages. In the years that followed the initial introduction of the bill, Chabot received nearly $100,000 from industry associations that would benefit from its passage.
End Citizens United and Let America Vote recently merged to combat the two biggest challenges facing our democracy: Big Money and voter suppression. ECU is dedicated to getting Big Money out of politics and fixing the rigged system in Washington so that the government works for all Americans. LAV is building a grassroots effort to fight back against voter suppression and protect every American’s right to vote. ECU has more than four million members nationwide, including 6,800 in Ohio’s First Congressional District, and is entirely grassroots-funded with an average donation of just $14.
For additional background on Chabot’s record and the Big Money 20, click here.
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