Campaign ‘finance’: sickening, depressing, frustrating, infuriating

To represent a New York congressional district slightly larger than the state of Connecticut, with a population of just 1.8 million people who, on average, earn between $23,000 (Yates County) and $37,700 (Monroe County), the incumbent congressman and his principal challenger have raised nearly $1.4 million so far in the 2006 election cycle.

Most of that money comes from outside the district each seeks to represent. It demonstrates the distressing, access-peddling role of money in American politics. That’s depressing and unlikely to change.