Is this a democracy?

Is an election between created personas — for example one who looks like Ronald Reagan and one who looks like Osama Bin Ladin — democratic?

That’s what we often get, thanks to paid political operatives using special interest money to create false personas for their candidates and their candidates’ opponents

I came to this realization in 1998 when I ran for the Ohio Senate

I won in Lorain County — where people knew the real me (from personal knowledge or news reports)— by almost 5,000 votes

But I lost outside my county, where voters knew only the fake “persona” created by my opponent’s political operatives – with money from outside the district by 5,500 votes

Ninety percent of my opponent’s funding came from Columbus according to a Board of Elections report Sixty percent of my spending was raised in the district His campaign outspent my campaign by 8 to 1!

But, an even worse scenario was played out this year in Ohio’s 55th District House race and 13th district State Senate race — where GOP candidates outspent their opponents by nearly 20 to 1!

And almost all of the winning candidates’ money came via professional politicians in Columbus

If you love America, I don’t care which issue you think is most important today – climate change, income inequality, racism, the “War on Terrorism” or whatever – until we pass a constitutional amendment taking these egregious sums of special interest money out of our political system, American democracy will remain just a sham and a memory Ron Nabakowski

Lorain County Clerk of Courts

Amherst