Letters to the editor

Dean's funding decision strikes gold mine of democratic action

Regarding 'Dean's "declaration of independence" is a red flag' (Mon., Nov. 10, 2003):

I write with some disappointment that Princeton professor Nicholas Guyatt chose to misrepresent Howard Dean's withdrawal from the public finance system and committed the same mistake as Dean's rivals during the recent controversy over the Confederate flag — that is, Professor Guyatt frames his argument out of the context of this election and diminishes his more reasonable points in the process.

There is nary a soul in the Democratic Party who would like to see the current campaign finance system continue in perpetuity. It is a system rotten from the inside and it threatens the ability of our democracy to sustain itself with the election of civically-minded public leaders. The rot at the core of our national embarrassment is George W. Bush himself and the $200 million he is raising to lie and distort his way to reelection.

Should the Democratic Party wish to fight the cancer of out-of-control campaign spending, the Democratic nominee will need enough resources, in terms of money and shoe leather, to upend Bush's "red state" electoral lock. To do this, wishful thinking cannot supplant the power of millions of small donors and volunteers who are working to send Bush on a bus back to Crawford, Texas.

The decision to leave the public finance system was ours, the hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens who have signed onto Dr. Dean's campaign for the White House. We believe not in unmitigated spending to buy elections, nor do we believe in unilateral disarmament in the face of a president ready to do just that. Professor Guyatt, when he laments our decision to take the funding of Dr. Dean's campaign into our own hands, should recognize where the money comes from. In the third quarter of this year, 188,000 individual donors contributed an average $85 to Dean for America. In contrast, a mere 462 contributed less than $500 to Bush's reelection drive. This comparison says something about who's funding Bush, and it says something about the power of the people behind Dr. Dean and his faith in the ability of ordinary Americans to take back their White House.

Professor Guyatt must scuttle arguments that are disingenuous to the cause for which we stand. With hundreds of thousands of small contributions to the Democrat most able to win the White House in 2004, what we strike is not a deal with the Devil of campaign finance but the gold mine of democratic action that is the foundation of this country. Joaquin R. Tamayo, Jr. Founding Director, Princeton for Dean