All the candidates seeking a White House run in 2016 seem to have little else but seven-figure campaign checks on the brain. Even in the state of New Hampshire, the home of the country’s first presidential primary, the candidates’ indifference towards ordinary voters is on full display.
While they’re still visiting the first-in-the-nation primary state, candidates are barely making themselves available to the general public—reinforcing the feeling in this country that access to our elected officials isn’t feasible without access to millions of dollars.
Over the course of two years, StampStampede.org has brought together thousands of Americans outraged by candidates prioritizing billionaires over regular voters. Nationally, over 45,000 Americans have joined the Stampede, including 1,000 New Hampshire residents, and they’re legally rubber-stamping anti-corruption messages on our nation’s currency. But Granite Staters are taking their activism one step further by directly bringing the message of the campaign to the visiting presidential candidates.
Some of the candidates have given stampers a warm welcome. Right after he announced his campaign, George Pataki posed with a bill decorated with the “Stamp Money Out of Politics” message. Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley have posed with stamped bills as well.
But many of the other candidates are making it hard to talk with them about big money in politics -- never mind introducing them to this people-powered campaign.
Some candidates have their campaign teams using doorkeepers to limit access to their events.
Secret Service kept people away from a
Hillary Clinton event. Police escorted stampers away from the GOP's "First-in-the-Nation Candidates
Summit" in Nashua.
This is becoming a troubling trend. If candidates have stopped engaging the general public in New Hampshire, it may be a preview as to how closed-off the rest of this coming election will look like for ordinary voters all across the country.