- JB
- Dave Lindstrom with petition packet
Former presidential candidate John McCain would invalidate it if he could, the State of Montana tried to, but the U.S. Supreme Court just this week wouldn’t let it. None of that is going to dissuade Dave Lindstrom of Memphis, a retired fundraiser and consultant, from giving it another shot.
What is this seemingly impossible task? The overturning of Citizens United, the now notorious Supreme Court decision of 2010 which struck down congressional and state curbs or limits on campaign spending by corporations and independent groups. In effect, this decision by the Roberts Court gave a green light to unlimited use of big money in campaigns for the first time since the out-of-control Nixon election of 1972.
In connection with MoveOn. org, Lindstrom last week took a petition bearing the names of 2,181 citizens to the downtown Memphis office of U.S. Senator Bob Corker. The petition seeks the Senator’s support for a constitutional amendment striking down Citizens United and restoring the right of governments to put response restrictions on campaign spending.
As it happened, Corker was not in Memphis when Lindstrom went by the Senator’s Peabody Place office to leave the petition and thus received no answer. The Flyer, too, in calls to Corker’s Washington office has been unable so far to get a response to the petition from the Senator or his staff.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Montana statute imposing limits on corporate campaign spending that the state’s Supreme Court had upheld.
Lindstrom feels that it behooves the state’s officeholders to take a position on Citizens United and vows to keep trying to get Corker and others to. He elicited a promise from us that the next time Senator Corker is in our neighborhood, or we in his, we’ll ask him what he thinks of Lindstrom’s petition and the Memphian’s efforts. Ditto with other congressional representatives.
