Campaign Finance Reform With our national election cycle reaching its quadrennial fervor, filled with frenzied campaigning and feverish advertising blitzes, American citizens are once again charged with the enormous task of deciding upon their next leadership class. What began with our forefather's modest experiment in democratic governance, built upon a foundation of informed citizenry selecting candidates who best represented shared values on the relevant issues of the day, has since become slowly distorted by the pernicious influence of corporatized campaign funding. The American political apparatus has traditionally been the arena of the affluent, because "like almost every pursuit in this free-enterprise country, political campaigning is a business & #8230; and, as in many businesses, success often goes not to the entrepreneur who brings a product to market first but to the one who exploits it best" (McManus, 2010). While candidates on the local, state and federal level have always been beholden to major donors, modern elections were forever transformed from contests of relative merit to proverbial spending sprees after the notorious decision delivered by the Supreme Court in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This landmark 5-4 ruling, made along strictly partisan lines in 2008, reversed more than a century of law regarding electioneering communication and essentially declared that the First Amendment's explicit guarantee of free speech necessarily protected the unlimited political expenditures made by corporations, § 501(c)(4) nonprofit organizations, and labor unions. The resulting injection of corporate and private capital into the presidential election, exemplified by the creation of so-called Super PACs, or political action committees, and the emergence of billionaire benefactors like William Adelson and the Koch brothers, has altered...

With the presidential campaign now controlled from afar by a cabal of wealthy financiers, the priority for voters in individual states like California should remain the preservation of their own political power through the passage of legislation which restricts rulings like Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission from being repeated.
When billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson casually declared his intention to purchase the presidency of the United States, telling Forbes magazine in 2012 "I'm against very wealthy people attempting to influence elections. But as long as it's doable, I'm going to do it," (Bertoni), he brazenly signaled the beginning of a new era in American politics. Adelson's braggadocio was backed up by cold cash soon afterwards, when he famously funneled more than $20 million to Newt Gingrich's failed foray into the Republican presidential primary. Although this particular attempt to manipulate major elections ultimately proved to be unsuccessful when Gingrich bowed out in favor of Mitt Romney, the ramifications of such unbridled campaign financing are far reaching for residents of large and densely populated states such as California. After the race for the White House has been decided in November, the jockeying for position within Sacramento's state political hierarchy will begin in earnest. Major donors like Adelson, his fellow conservatives David and Charles Koch, and the reputed liberal political patron George Soros will undoubtedly use the legal loopholes…