Anti-Corruption Movement Uniting Left and Right

New Hampshire, the cornerstone of presidential elections, is a purple state where both left-leaning socialists and right-leaning libertarians call home. It is also fast becoming the seat of the movement poised to take on the corruption of money in politics.

Possibly the most valued presidential primary, as New Hampshire is widely seen as a microcosm of white, working-class America, what happens there sets the tone for the remainder of the primary season and lets candidates know what issues are most important to the people during the election year.

In January of this year, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig’s group Rootstrikers, which focuses on getting money out of politics, teamed up with grassroots activists in the Granite State to form a new group called the New Hampshire Rebellion. The Rebellion marched more than 150 miles, from Dixville Notch at the top of the state where the first ceremonial ballots of the presidential primary are cast all the way to Nashua, to raise awareness about the issue of corruption in politics and elections.

“What we found in New Hampshire is that it’s easy to get the attention of the whole state," Lessig said in a phone interview with Occupy.com. "The march had more than 600,000 media impressions in New Hampshire, a state with only 750,000 voters. We had a very powerful impact by raising this issue there.”

Lessig dedicated the march to the memory of Doris Haddock, colloquially known as Granny D, who famously walked across the continental U.S. carrying a sign that read “CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM" when she was in her eighties. Lessig is already planning another march across the state next January and is helping organize two other marches over the course of this year. He wants the movement to be embraced by voters of all political persuasions in the months before the New Hampshire presidential primary.

“The presidential campaign goes through this vortex called New Hampshire. It’s a small, manageable state. People are attuned to this issue, and are on our side on this issue,” Lessig said. “What we found in New Hampshire is that it’s easy to get the attention of the whole state.”

Just a few dozen of New Hampshire’s deeply passionate political activists managed to shift the entire narrative of the 2012 presidential debates during Occupy the New Hampshire Primary, using well-timed direct actions to force candidates to talk about income inequality and poverty, and using tested “birddogging” techniques to catch presidential candidates off-guard.

In January of 2012, Occupy protester Mark Provost publicly confronted Mitt Romney on his stance that corporations are people. The presence of Occupy protesters at a Jon Huntsman event prompted him to talk about taxing the 1 percent. Occupiers provoked a mean-spirited reaction from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in Exeter, N.H. And during the height of the Occupy Movement, protestersinterrupted President Obama with a “mic check” protest calling on Obama to prosecute banks and call off the arrests of peaceful protesters.

Manchester, N.H., resident Matt Lawrence, a principal organizer for Occupy the New Hampshire Primary, said plans are already in the works to make the narrative for the 2016 primaries about getting money out of politics. Lawrence says the 2016 effort won’t include the “Occupy” brand, in an effort to include a diverse array of activists.

“This isn’t just the Republicans’ fault, it’s not just the Democrats’ fault,” Lawrence said. “We want to reach out to socialists, libertarians from the Free State Project, and everyone else from the left and the right who believes that [money in politics] is the most important issue out there.”

“We’re not just pointing fingers at the other guy and laying blame," Lawrence added. "We’re past that now."

Professor Lessig emphasizes that the New Hampshire Rebellion will only succeed if the movement is able to be trans-partisan, and appeal to people on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Lessig says the key to reaching out to conservative activists and winning their support for the cause is pointing out “crony capitalism,” or the fact that lawmakers are more interested in setting up special deals for campaign donors than in serving the needs of constituents.

“That’s their cause, and that’s what this is about,” Lessig said. “If you get people to recognize that crony capitalism corrupts government and corrupts capitalism, then they’re interested in talking to you.”

A recent study by grad students Joshua Kalla of Yale University and David Broockman of University of California, Berkeley, found that, in efforts to set up meetings with members of Congress about pending legislation, meetings were more likely to happen when they identified themselves as “donors” than when they merely identified as “constituents.”

“This area has long been a province of anecdotes,” Broockman said in an interview with TIME magazine. “But it’s also one of the number one things Americans say they are worried about.”

Concrete legislation currently in Congress that Lessig believes will address the corruption of money in politics includes the Government By the People Act, which has about 140 co-sponsors in the House. The bill aims to decrease the influence of big money donors by providing matching public funds for individuals who want to make contributions to candidates. It also allows people to form small donor committees called “People PACs” that aim to amplify the voices of ordinary citizens.

The Fair Elections Now Act is similar legislation that aims to level the playing field for candidates by helping them get seed money to run for office, limited to small-dollar contributions from residents living in their state. The act would also provide discounted airtime to candidates as Election Day draws closer. The goal of the bill is to make it easier for candidates to focus more on their constituents and less on raising money from wealthy donors.

However, an upcoming Supreme Court ruling in the McCutcheon vs. the Federal Election Commission case could have campaign finance laws running in the opposite direction. The ruling would ease limits on aggregate donations, allowing individual wealthy contributors to give more money to an even greater pool of federal candidates.

“What [McCutcheon] would do is change the business model of fundraising, so candidates would spend time raising larger amounts of money from fewer people. It would further concentrate the funder influx, and that’s the critical thing we’ve got to lose,” Lessig said.

While Lessig believes in mobilizing people at the grassroots level to address money in politics, he wants to see the cause become accepted in mainstream culture rather than focus energy in passing legislation in Washington. He wants New Hampshire to merely be the first state among many where citizens reach across partisan divisions to work together on abolishing the influence of money in politics.

“That’s the model, and there’s a potential to actually make it bigger, is if it’s not so easily pidgeonholed,” Lessig said. “If we can bring conservatives and progressives in, it will be harder to ignore.”