Quotes from Zephyr Teachout

A lot of organizations have pointed out that under public financing systems, you see a lot more candidates of color and a lot more women. But you also see the power base behind these candidates is more representative and far less exclusively wealthy.

Until the 1980s, candidates spent a fraction of their time talking to donors; just a few weeks a year, a little more right before an election. True, they'd fund raise from the wealthy interests, as they do now, but it was a minuscule part of their job: policy and constituent services were the heart of the work.

I'm an FDR Democrat, and I really believe that the most important thing is the institutions of political parties, and engaging in those institutions, and, where you disagree with them, speaking up and sharing your disagreement.

There's this myth out there that self-perpetuates that candidates believe that although the populace cares about corruption, they're not going to vote on it.

Anti-corruption is a core constitutional value. It always has been.

And my whole life I've been focused on questions of anti-corruption laws, on constitutional law, and it's essential that the power of this office be maximized to stop corruption at the national level.

Political corruption is eating our democracy out from the inside. Most Americans know that. But democratic and economic health can't be easily disentangled.

Creating systems where people feel like they're being punished for things they didn't do wrong breaks all kinds of trust and makes people feel like they're not being treated with dignity.

I tend to think that knowledge is preceded by power instead of the other way around.

As attorney general, I would work with my colleagues in other states to launch a major antitrust investigation to look into the ways in which Facebook and Google are wielding and may be abusing their duopoly powers.

So paid media is when you buy an ad - typically in a presidential campaign that will be in Iowa, New Hampshire, the early states. It costs some money to make the ad, but the greatest cost is in actually placing the ad on TV.

We need to pressure lawmakers to hold hearings on pending mergers, and pressure federal and state enforcers to use their full powers.

I am not Pollyannaish about the depths of the challenges we face.

Mom and pop shops paying taxes while Amazon got billions just to come to town didn't seem right, and, post-FoxxConn, people are less likely to fall for the promised jobs numbers.

We fought a revolution to free ourselves from arbitrary power and the whims of a monarch.

Every district is going to be different, but if you wanted me to give advice to those candidates: Run your own campaign, the DCCC does not run your campaign. Figure out ways to raise money from small-dollar donors, and put some real energy into that because that will give you freedom to say no to big donors.

Politicians are expected to spend half their time talking to funders and to keep them happy. Given this context, it's not hard to see how a bribery charge can feel like a technical argument instead of a moral one.

Facebook is a known behemoth corporate monopoly. It has exposed at least 87 million people's data, enabled foreign propaganda and perpetuated discrimination. We shouldn't be begging for Facebook's endorsement of laws, or for Mark Zuckerberg's promises of self-regulation.

At a policy level, we can support protecting and serving as opposed to militarization or disproportionate response. Step one is making sure we don't militarize and actually call for a review of military equipment in New York police forces.

New York state's Donnelly Act gives power at least as great - many think greater - than that of the Sherman Act. We have strong consumer protection laws that can be used to protect against scams and frauds by corporate monopolists.

The structure of private campaign finance has essentially pre-corrupted our politicians, so that they can't even recognize explicit bribery because it feels the same as what they do every day.

One of the things I care about a lot is public financing in elections.

So the job of building structures, building a constitutional structure, is not just to punish those who behave badly but actually to protect people from their own temptations.

If we don't have a responsive democracy, all the debates about charter schools, and fracking, and high-stakes testing, and the militarization of police forces - all of which are issues I care about – they aren't real debates.