We citizens can spend the money up front to pay for candidates to run in the elections, or we can let the people with large sums of money available pay for the candidates. The government our society gets does different things. Do we want better society, or do we want more wealthy and powerful investors?
If we want money to determine how our state works, then we will continue to let people like Leinnenger or Sanchez spend whatever they want to win elections for their candidates. This is called "plutocracy" or rule by the wealthy. Their purpose is control of government for their purposes. If these purposes are what society needs, it is almost entirely an accident. That is the nature of the tool they use to sway elections - money.
When money is the investment in an election, it is expected to provide a return on the investment that exceeds the expense by an amount that gets larger depending on the risk involved for the investor. Large amounts of money into the system requires an assured greater amount of money back out. Because of the risk involved in elections, the investment has to provide a very high return.
What do the voters get? Not good governance. The voters get "bought politicians" and the opportunity to watch the investors in those politicians make a lot of money. That's all. The voters' votes are mostly bought by the large money people through the hgighly sophisticated techniques developed by the Public Relations industry since the 1920's
If we (the voters) are lucky, then the investors will ALSO offer some level of competence in governance, but it really doesn't matter much to the incumbents if they provide good social governance or not. Money is what elected the candidates, money is the required output of election, and money will reelect the incumbents. Good governance is an accidental side effect.
If we want ideas, character and good governance to determine how our state works, then we will institute public financing for elections as Arizona and Maine have done. This will remove money as the key element in electing our representatives, and will permit a larger variety of potential candidates to run for election. Then those candidates will run on their ideas, character, and personal history, and as representatives of organizations we voters can evaluate.
We can demand that they provide competent governance as return for being elected. I don't oppose investors getting a good return for their efforts, but their efforts should be aimed at providing better goods and services to their customers, not getting control of tax revenues for their own purposes.
Candidates elected using public financing will be elected on their ideas and competence. Such people might actually establish a reasonable system of funding the schools. The investors won't. They can't get any cash return on their investment in electing candidates by establishing a decent school finance system. Those investors will do nothing except block any reasonable education finance system - as they have done for at least three decades.
Educating other people's children is a major benefit to society and to the parents who spend the time and money to raise the children. In the long run it builds a better, more wealthy society. What it does not do is provide an immediate high return to the investors in elections. It is only an expense to those investors. A few such investors will spend the money anyway out of altruism, but most will not. It's not a good investment.
Unless we remove the money that controls our elections and government, we will never get decent government. In the long run, even the money men will get a better society. They just won't control it.
But we are not going to get good government until ~WE~, the voters, pay for the selection of our policy-makers.
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