Chris Fitzsimon: Democracy's admission fee

Speculation about likely Democratic candidates for governor and lieutenant governor is dominating Raleigh's political world these days. It is also serving as reminder of a major problem that persists in our political system, known as the wealth primary.

Most of the stories about potential candidates mention money prominently, often before anything else — how much the candidates have raised or how able they are to finance their campaigns with their personal wealth.

The fact that former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory has $2 million in his campaign account is described as evidence of his front-runner status. Money equals credibility in the political process.

Candidates without wealth or access to it simply are not taken seriously by the political establishment. They are weeded out of the process, regardless of their ideas.

That means if you want to run for public office and are not a millionaire or don't have a lot of wealthy friends, you turn to the traditional sources of campaign money: political action committees, frequent donors, and other special interests with a direct and often financial stake in the decisions you will make after you are elected.

It is not a partisan phenomenon. The current system forces candidates in both parties to chase private money that comes with strings attached.

It's no wonder the public is cynical about politics. You as a voter or constituent do not matter nearly as much to your elected official as the person who holds a $100,000 fundraiser in his or her living room.

That doesn't mean all politicians are for sale. It means our system is broken and that money means more than ideas.

It almost seems like a quaint notion to complain about that in this era of legalized corporate contributions, super PACs, 527s and all the other permutations of big-money machines that infect our elections in the wake of the Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Many political insiders scoff when advocates raise objections to the auctions dressed up as elections every two or four years.

But none of us were taught in school that you must have access to wealth to fully participate in a democracy or that the people with the most money usually win elections. But that's reality now in North Carolina and across the country.

There are other ways to finance elections. The one that makes the most sense is still public financing, where candidates who demonstrate their credibility with signatures or a significant number of small contributions receive public money to run their campaigns.

Most politicians and think-tanks on the right, funded by wealthy special interests, rail against the clean source of money that public financing provides as "welfare for politicians." They apparently want elected officials beholden to people who contribute and raise money for their campaigns, not to the voters.

Republicans in the General Assembly have defunded North Carolina's public-financing program for council of state elections and ended a pilot program for elections at the local level.

For years folks on the right have responded to questions about the obvious problems in the current campaign-finance system by saying that full and immediate disclosure of contributions is the answer, that voters deserve to know where a candidate's funding is coming from and can make their decisions on how to vote accordingly.

But the Citizens United decision changed that. It not only allowed corporations to spend money influencing elections, it made it possible for people to give money anonymously to groups that pay for commercials against candidates for office.

Efforts in Raleigh and Washington to require disclosure of those contributions were bottled up by Republicans, the folks who used to be so committed to transparency.

The only thing they like better than special-interest money is secret special-interest money.

Call me quaint if you want, but democracy is not supposed to work this way.