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Winds of Change Newsletter, September 2008 See sidebar for table of contents
Clean Elections Summit Clarifies Strategy
The WV Citizens for Clean Elections coalition was joined
by Adam Smith and Jeannette Galanis from Public Campaign for a three-day
marathon of meetings and strategy sessions June 3-5.
These included quite productive meetings with our lead
House sponsor for the WV Public Campaign Financing Act, Del. John Doyle,
and with House Judiciary Chair Carrie Webster.
Several supportive legislators attended a lunch meeting
and gave us valuable input: Sen. Dan Foster, Sen. Randy White, Del.
Bobbie Hatfield and Del. Doyle.
Our allies from Public Campaign were impressed by the
fact that our legislative supporters are willing to contribute strategy
ideas and work directly with us on convincing other legislators to
support the bill.
On June 4, the coalition convened for an all-day Clean
Elections Summit at John XXIII, which was attended by 19 representatives
of partner organizations.
There was much animated discussion about the political
lay of the land affecting our bills prospects, such as the embarrassing
Maynard/Blankenship scandal and the WVU/Bresch incident. Both served to
draw negative attention to the influence of money in politics and to
encourage citizen action.
Public Campaign will be working with us to create
several mini-reports on specific issues of concern in West Virginia
where money has affected policy outcomes, such as health care,
prescription drugs and the environment.
The group suggested a number of new and creative ideas
for getting our message about the advantages of the clean elections
system out to the public.
The work of the Summit helped put in place a detailed
year-long strategy and related actions for the coalitions work in
supporting the bill. We will need to generate contact with legislators,
especially from people in their districts, in order to secure passage
during the 2009 session (see related article on the new GetActive
webpage).
To find out how you can help, see our Clean Elections
website at
www.wvoter-owned.org or contact Carol Warren at peacelovemom@gmail.com.
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