Here’s a little something from Matt Stout’s story in today’s Boston Globe, After Centuries of Picking One Candidate per Office, Should Voters Rank their Preference Instead? Concerning the fundraising of The Ranked Choice Voting 2020 Committee:
John Arnold has pumped some of his billions into Massachusetts policy and politics in recent years. John Arnold, though, is from Texas (former Enron and hedge fund guy).
In 2016, he spent $250,000 on supporting the effort to increase charter schools in Massachusetts.
Here’s something I wrote during the gubernatorial campaign of 2018: “Returning to 2018 there is another committee supporting Governor Baker, called the Patients for Affordable Drugs Action Independent Expenditure Political Action Committee. But there are no patients! This SuperPAC has received one donation, $510,000 from John and Laura Arnold of Dallas, Texas.”
Then there is just letting the governor know how much he is cherished, with online ads like this:
Paid for by Patients for Affordable health care, i.e., John Arnold of Texas.
With the RCV donations, John Arnold of Texas is at least in the range of $1.5 million to influence policy and politics in Massachusetts.
This is what democracy looks like?
We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis
[Full disclosure: as an educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money.]