Senator Maria Cantwell spoke at the Washington Public Campaigns (WPC) 4th Annual Awards Banquet at South Seattle Community College Brockey Center Saturday, June 19. The event was coined "Fair Elections Now!" and she and other speakers emphasized the urgency for election finance reform to minimize damage done by special interests and lobbyists that could derail health care reform and recession recovery.

Democratic Candidate for the 34th District, Marcee Stone, emceed. Stone, who pledged not to take PAC or corporate money is the former president of WPC, now held by Annie Phillips of Burien, who also spoke. WPC board member Brian Gunn urged the audience to recruit more WPC members. Elsie Simon was awarded WPC Volunteer of the Year Award.

"We have an antiquated system that continues to reward the influence of large organizations in our campaign system when what we really need to do is vote for people based on what they stand for and what their constituents want them to do in Washington, D.C.," said Sen. Cantwell in her speech.

"While we are very proud that we were able to get a model of the basic health plan into the Federal program, we still are going to have a choice in this country of whether you're just going to subsidize expensive insurance and have the Federal government pay to subsidize expensive insurance which is basically doubling every 10 years, or whether we're going to pursue something that would give states as a purchaser the real clout to negotiate and drive down the cost of health care. I want those state negotiations.," she said.

"This group's attention is primarily on creating a publicly funded path to office for Washington State on the city, county, and state level, but we're also supporting at the Federal level," WPC board member Ken Dammand, a Captain on the Everett Fire Department, and with the Everett department 29 years, told the West Seattle Herald.

"People have to spend too much time and sell a part of their autonomy getting campaign funds, then have trouble accurately representing the public at large," he added. "It's a problem with the structure of our democracy, not a party problem. I think that's why people on the right or the left are not real happy with the government now. The people that are happy are few, and those are the ones paying people to get elected. It's just my opinion. Less than a quarter of one percent of the voting age population gives $200 or more to a campaign. Two hundred dollars isn't going to buy you influence. PAC's do buy influence. There's no other reason they'd do it. Senator Cantwell is now sponsoring the 'fair elections now' act, so we're real proud of her for doing that. It's like we left a wheel off the wagon when we designed our system. You can't be part of it until you go through sources of money that bind you and that kind of defeats democracy, and we want to nourish democracy."