Every national election drains much-needed money away from communities as politicians and their supporters—most of whom also donate significantly to charities—“feed the beast” of mass communications to enable their chosen politician or party to connect with the electoral base.

As Presidential elections shot past the $3 billion mark in 2004, our national midterm elections also are now well over $1 billion, especially in a competitive, watershed year like 2006.

We support the democratic process but we ask all of our donors to consider matching every dollar they give to a politician or political party with a dollar to meet human needs or advance the human condition.

In plain language, it is difficult for those of us engaged in humanitarian endeavors fulltime to swallow a presidential election in which each party’s candidate will have to raise and spend over $500 million to get elected; where a race for the U.S. Senate or Governor (especially in California) costs well over $30 million; where House of Representatives races now regularly cost well into the millions of dollars, and mayoral races in larger cities also cost millions to mount.

Most of this goes to purchasing media time or media space, to consultants and to pollsters.

We cannot escape making comparisons to our own humanitarian work:

$500-$5000 builds a house in a range of countries affected by earthquakes, tsunamis and floods

$15,000-$30,000 builds a school accommodating 100 or more students

$12,000-$25,000 builds a health clinic

$3500 buys and outfits a small (5 meter) fishing boat

$200-$800 funds a “livelihood” grant to enable someone to participate in the economy of a small country

$50-$200 funds a “micro-credit” loan to enable a woman in a rural mostly non-cash economy to start up a business in poultry, handicrafts, or some other local occupation

I’ll leave the math to you but it’s truly impressive what relatively modest sums can do to uplift an entire region and forever raise people’s standard of living and quality of life.

Operation USA’s motto is “Give….and we get it there.” We wish our political process could produce the same result for the enormous sums expended on getting just one person a political job.

Richard Walden
President & CEO
Operation USA