By ADELAIDE JACOBSON
Los Alamos

Though 2020 is a very different campaign season for political candidates there is one unfortunate constant to running for political office in the United States regardless of the year, the necessity to raise money and, increasingly, large sums of money.

Since the 2010 US Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, campaign contributions and spending increasingly come not from individual citizens, but from political action committees (PACs) and independent expenditure action committees (Super PACs) whose donors may be disclosed, or not, depending on the entity. Additionally, candidates and their campaigns have NO control over Super PAC messaging.

New Mexicans for Money Out of Politics and American Promise are campaigning for an amendment to the US Constitution curtailing the expansiveness of the decisions in Citizens United and subsequent case law which would reduce the influence of money in elections.

I ask all Los Alamos County candidates and elected officials to sign the American Promise Pledge supporting congressional action to initiate the process for a constitutional amendment to limit the unseemly influence of money in our elections.