“Trevor Potter: Happy Campaign Finance Warrior”

Interview at BillMoyers.com.

So given all of that, are you going to march?

Potter: Oh, I’m too sedentary a lawyer. I care deeply about all this, but most of my work is done through legal briefs and explaining the problems, which is I think how I can make my voice most effective on all this.

Do you think these tactics make any sense, the idea of a big march, civil disobedience, getting arrested?

As a Republican I think there’s a problem with that plan in this circumstance. And let’s start with the fact that the famous Civil Rights marches were effective, I believe, because their numbers were so huge. People were shocked at the number of people who came. I don’t know how big the numbers will be for these marches, but it seems to me unhelpful to have just another march. If you’re going to have one, it does need to have numbers that really surprise people.

But beyond that, this is an issue that needs bipartisan support. Civil rights had bipartisan support. You know, if you go back and look at it, Lyndon Johnson got the Civil Rights Act of ’64 through Congress with key Republican support. That was not something he could’ve done on a partisan basis. And I think it’s important for the legitimacy of reform that it be bipartisan.

The march is largely organized by Democratic and Progressive groups, and it doesn’t look to me like a good venue for bringing out all the Republicans, who the polls say are equally unhappy. If this was a march that was being organized on a bipartisan basis by Republicans and Democrats and you had let’s say Trump, Sanders and Clinton leading it–to start with, maybe we’d finally get Senator Cruz to talk about these issues too, which would be helpful, or Governor Kasich. But beyond that, I think then you would have a sense that the march reflected the nation, that those numbers you spoke of, of 80% majorities in both parties wanting to change the system in terms of money in politics, that it would represent that.  What I worry about is that a march that is organized by and populated by and spoken to by largely one party — Democrat — causes Republicans to think, “Well, these aren’t my people. Maybe this shouldn’t be my issue.” And in a country that’s as polarized as we are, I think it’s important that whatever is done visibly be bipartisan.

And of course, that’s hard to do when you have a Republican party whose official position at the moment is essentially against regulation of money in politics. It celebrates — this is one of the problems is there’s a real gap between the leadership of the party in Washington, in Congress, at the Republican National Committee and where the grassroots are. But that’s what Trump’s campaign is illustrating. That’s what the polls tell us, that the leadership has really got a tin ear on this issue, or they’re so desperately trying to keep the system where they control the super PACs and they get the big money that they’re unwilling to listen to the party grassroots on this.

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