Freyberg:

The Conservative political group Citizens United sponsored the presidential candidate roundup. It was five years ago this month that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case, and held that money equals speech and corporations have the same First Amendment rights as people when it comes to political speech. The High Court ruled that corporations and unions can spend unlimited sums of money to try to elect candidates so long as they don’t coordinate their activities with those candidates. The director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign took note of the anniversary, saying, We’ve seen the consequences of Citizens United here in our state.

Freyberg:

Matt Rothschild joins us now. Thanks for being here.

Matt Rothschild:

My pleasure, thanks for having me on.

Freyberg:

You called them ugly consequences. How so?

Rothschild:

Well, the Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to dirty money. It’s dirty money drowning our democracy. We don’t have equal participation. It’s ironic they were there, the group that destroyed finance in this country and sits on the lap of the Koch brothers who say they’ll spend $900 million, $900 million to buy the next election and pocket the public policies. The same Koch brothers spent $5 1/2 million dollars here in Wisconsin since Citizens United was decided.

Freyberg:

This isn’t a partisan thing because it’s not just people like the Koch brothers.

Rothschild:

No, but it shouldn’t be a battle between billionaires. We have the Koch brothers saying they’ll spend $900 million, them and their billion dollar buddies. We have ABC Supply giving a million dollars to the Republican Party. And there’s someone in Milwaukee who sent a million dollars to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. What are we going to have, a fight between multi-multi-multi-millionaires? I thought we were all as citizens supposed to be an equal right to participate in our election.

Freyberg:

Why do you call it dirty money?

Rothschild:

A lot of it is untraceable. The Koch brothers send the money, not directly to the political parties or to the candidates, but they do a little of that, but spend the lion’s share of the money to so-called nonprofit groups who don’t have to disclose where they’re getting the money and the nonprofit groups spend militaries of dollars in our local elections.

Does this even yet, though, resonate with voters? Because they might say, I don’t care where it comes from. I know it’s everywhere.

Rothschild:

Well, I think voters are very distressed by all the outside money that’s going into our political process, but here in Wisconsin, fortunately, people are standing up and fighting back. In 54 villages, towns, cities and counties across the state of Wisconsin, people have voted by overwhelming margins to say they want to overturn Citizens United. They want to amend the U.S. Constitution to say corporations aren’t, in fact, persons, and money isn’t, in fact, speech. This has happened to red Waukesha by lopsided margins, people are voting to amend the U.S. Constitution and get the money out of politics. It’s contaminating the whole system.

Freyberg:

You don’t hear many politicians calling for change, do you?

Rothschild:

There are a lot of politicians who want this change. Just last week an assembly woman here in Wisconsin introduced a bill that would give the citizens of Wisconsin, in November of next year, the right to vote on this referendum as to whether we should amend the U.S. Constitution and say that corporations aren’t, in fact, people.

Freyberg:

What do you think the likelihood of that is?

Rothschild:

Well, it’s not going to pass, probably, here at statewide-level because the Republicans control the Legislature and Scott Walker would veto it anyway. But the great exciting thing is that people across the State, at the county- and city-level and town-level, are expressing themselves, and it’s part of a national movement to amend the Constitution. That’s why I have hope we’ll get money out of politics. Otherwise, it’s drowning our democracy. It’s not a democracy anymore. It’s a plutocracy. They can get together and spend $9 billion. It’s nuts.

Freyberg:

It turns political races into playthings of the super-rich. How do ordinary citizens engage in the process if that’s the case?