My personal experience with political corruption

This is going to be filled with a ton of vague information because this happened over 25 years ago and my heart wasn't really in it anyway, I was just there to make some extra cash and was also somewhat dedicated to the "cause" simply because a friend of mine was running for city council where I went to college.

He was an abnormal candidate in that he definitely wasn't part of the political elite, even on that sort of low level like city council, but the campaign was really dirty and there was a ton of money involved for a position that doesn't even pay very much. I think that the salary for being a member of the city council was less than $30,000 a year, yet there was so much money being pumped into it and this was evident even with the $100 a day that I was being paid to do "this and that."

Since that day I have always been a bit leery about all politicians because the fact that we were spending several times the amount in expenses towards attempting to get my friend elected than the job actually pays, was pretty damn suspicious and it was very surprising to me.

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So the story goes that I had a pal that lived in my neighborhood and he was a cool dude. I don't mind telling you his name, it is William Gheen, because he is a public figure now and has been on many news shows because of his involvement in ALIPAC, which is a conservative political action committee. He was NOT conservative at the time that I knew him and lived in the same town as him. We were basically political opposites but politics were a lot less "dirty" back then than they are now. We would have long, calm, and sane conversations about our differences and I think that both of us probably learned something that perhaps we hadn't though about before. In a way we helped the other to understand the mind of someone that has completely different ideals than the other.

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_{I will admit that it is amusing to me that his political leanings have completely shifted since our days in college...he was a hardcore liberal then}

When he was looking for people to support his campaign and asked me to help, his political affiliation and how it didn't line up with mine wasn't even a concern of mine at all. He was a friend, and friends help one another out. At the time I had no idea I was going to be paid for this but later on, it ended up being seriously mutually beneficial.

He was definitely NOT wealthy and he didn't come from legacy money either so one day as we were sitting in his rather disgusting living room and talking about the campaign strategy, I asked him "where is all of this money coming from?" because I knew he didn't have any.

The answer was simple: Some man who was running for a higher office than his, needed "boots on the ground" where we lived for his own campaign and in return for helping this candidate for his re-election, he was going to bankroll "Bill" Gheen's campaign as well.

Now this wasn't a huge amount of money, but between the car rentals, the payment of staff, campaign materials such as signs, stickers, and a call center, it was a lot more than the 30 grand that the position was going to pay if he got elected.

I was going door to door, talking with people on campus, getting students registered to vote, and on the day of the election sitting in the cars that drove people to the polling stations as well as standing around said polling stations talking to people that turned up, I reckon the total amount of money spent was around $100,000 or so.

While campaigning for my friend Bill, we also had to plug or talk about another politician, Linwood Mercer. I knew very little about this guy other than the fact that he was a democrat and running for state senate in Eastern North Carolina. I had to tell people about the benefits of voting for him but my heart was definitely not in it and I was basically just reading a script.

I do know that the county that I was in at the time was heavily black, so we had a stack of information cards that we would give people depending on their ethnicity. This sounds terrible, but that is the way that politics work. I had a stack of information cards in my hands, the ones on the bottom had a picture of his white face, the ones on the top only had information that was cleverly designed to talk about issues that it is perceived is important to the black community. I was not in charge of any of this but it was evident what was going on at the time.

Now in the end of it all, William Gheen ended up losing by a very small margin, but it was kind of seen as a "win" anyway, because nobody had ever given the incumbent candidate a real election challenge and she was in office from 1985 to 2001. That one election came down to just a couple of hundred votes.

Now here is the part where the corruption comes in: It is technically not legal for Linwood Mercer to completely bankroll Gheen's campaign, but his political action committee IS allowed to do that. Had Bill been left to his own devices for fundraising he wouldn't have stood a chance as far as getting his name out there was concerned, but Linwood saw an opportunity to align himself with someone that was younger and somewhat influential in our college town and while the situation was mutually beneficial. The fact that Linwood was willing to dump 100 grand or so on someone he hadn't know before then was pretty telling though.

The annual pay for a State Senator in North Carolina is around $150,000 and I think this is too much for sure... but when we went to the victory party at Linwood's estate, this place was absolutely majestic. This was a multi-multi-multi million dollar property and the people in attendance were all rather wealthy as well. I don't think that anyone in attendance actually liked Mr. Mercer but everyone was there to bootlick for a little while and he even went around with a fake ass smile on his face to thank all of us little guys that helped get him re-elected. It was at that time that I realized that his position in the government had definitely made his wealth, and not the other way around.

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There were hundreds of people at this fancy catered party and I can only guess how much that one party must have cost. Even though Bill lost his campaign he booked a club in our college town and had his own party where all food and drinks were free. This was paid for out of the "war chest" which was political money.

I became a bit disenfranchised about politics from that year forward because even on this rather low level of positions of power, there was an absolutely HUGE amount of money involved in the process. When only the elites can afford to even run then we are always going to end up with only elites in the positions. I don't believe for a second that Linwood Mercer gave half a damn about me, or even Bill Gheen. To him, we were just pawns that were necessary on his path towards victory and he was victorious. After that, Linwood completely dismissed all of us, including Bill. I never did try to contact him or use him as a reference for anything but I am quite certain he wouldn't have helped me because he no longer needed to.

He was all smiles and handshakes on the day of his victory party, but afterwards when he got to go inside at the end of the day he was probably thinking "thank God those jackasses are off my property now."

How does a man who makes $150k a year end up owning a property of that magnitude? I make 6 figures as well, and I consider myself rather successful in life but a property like his, is completely pipe-dream distance out of reach for me. Linwood, and many other people like him (I would say most politicians) are simply enriching themselves off of their elected positions and then come out of hiding once every 4 years to pretend as though they actually give a damn about the regular people in the world.

If you have the BEST ideas, you will never see political office, the money barriers in the way of even attempting to get involved are just too big.