Both Candidates Overcame Historic, Eye Popping Amounts of Big, Outside Spending
End Citizens United // Let America Vote President Tiffany Muller released the following statement after Summer Lee and Andrea Salinas took on and defeated historic amounts of, big, outside spending and were victorious in their primaries on Tuesday night. Both Lee and Salinas ran on a message of putting people ahead of big donors and special interests:
“Since the Citizens United decision, we’ve seen exponential increases in outside money and dark money in our election. It’s growing in both parties, and it’s bad for voters, bad for candidates, and bad for democracy.
“Every election cycle, voters are overwhelmed with negative ads and often can’t find out who’s trying to influence their vote and their representatives. Thanks to dark, outside money, candidates are losing control over their own message to voters and the government is becoming more responsive to corporate special interests instead of the people.
“Summer Lee’s and Andrea Salinas’ victories give us hope and prove that there is a strong path forward for grassroots campaigns and candidates intent on putting people ahead of corporate interests and big donors. They proved that grassroots can stand up to wealthy outside money and overcome it.
“There’s no question that Big Money tilts the playing field in favor of special interests. But these two candidates showed that good candidates running inspiring people-powered campaigns, instead of campaigns propped up by dark money, can prevail, especially when they emphasize that they aren’t beholden to wealthy special interests. Lee and Salinas, over 2,500 miles apart on opposite sides of the country, made clear they would fight to unrig the system so it works for everyone. As last night’s results showed, that is a winning message.
In the OR-06 race, which Andrea Salinas won, there was over $13 million spent to stop her from being elected, while in the PA-12 race that Summer Lee won, there was over $3 million in outside spending to hurt her campaign.
End Citizens United spent five-figures on digital ads, funded by small-dollar donors, in support of Summer Lee in the weeks leading up to the election.
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