According the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, the candidate who spent the most money won 93 percent of House of Representatives races and 94 percent of Senate races in 2008.  The average cost of winning a House race in 2008 was nearly $1.1 million, while $6.5 million was the average campaign cost for a Senate seat.

If those who spend the most money are always destined to win elections, then loyalty to money will always tend to trump loyalty to one's constituents.

We reject the premise that money has the last word in electoral politics.  With the tools of social networking and grassroots relationship development now adopted widely, spending money to win elections is no longer the name of the game.

AMEN!

This is no small breakthrough, friends.  If you have been skeptical about politics, thinking there is no way to change the game--well, the game has changed.

Today, political campaigns no longer must raise massive sums of money to control the message. Now, such controls are not only too costly financially, they are also exceedingly expensive politically.  Everyone is tired of the same canned party-concocted, soundbyte-driven messaging.

In 2008 the game changed forever.  For the first time, Pew Research identified that the internet surpassed all other media except television as an outlet for national and international news.  That change has dramatically reshaped the Democratic party, and has thus turned our government decidedly in a liberal direction.

It is no coincidence that the discontent of the left “netroots” rose to prominence with the rise of the Internet, blasting President Bush with a ceaseless vigor.  Traditional mainstream media outlets--many of which were already crippled financially due to the Internet--were only too eager to embrace the narrative of the far left, "Bush lied, people died."

We saw the game-changing nature of the Internet in the Presidential election of 2008, where Barack Obama best leveraged the web to win, tapping the passion of the anti-war left, raising over $500 million online, building an impressive grassroots volunteer base, and surprising two established candidates, Hillary Clinton in the primary and then John McCain in the general election.

These changes have filtered down to minds of America's youth.  Pew also reported that 2008 produced a sea change for young people ages 18-29, as the Internet equaled television as the main source of national and international news.

For all people young and old who participate in the Jim Trautz campaign, we are confident that effective grassroots communication is set to surpass money spent as the primary determinant of success.  Message control may have been the path to election victory for an entire generation whose political mentalities were forged in the age of television, beginning in the famous Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960.  But the age of television-driven message control and money-driven politics is coming to a close.

And with this massive shift, the message-control candidates of the television era are all at risk.  People can listen right through the canned, party-driven messaging.

The stage is now set for something new and sustainable.  This campaign aims to be a catalyst towards the exciting times where the massive gap between citizens and representatives will be bridged for good.