After perhaps (maybe) suggesting in Part I that my locally elected representatives might not have my or the rest of their constituents’ best interests in mind, I’m now wondering how they got into office in the first place.

I’m willing to bet Joe Lieberman’s $20,213,419 campaign purse versus Ralph Ferrucci’s $2,365 had something to do with it.

Who’s Ralph Ferrucci? you might ask. Exactly.

Because of our millionaires-gone-wild approach to campaigning, only major-party (read: corporate-sponsored) and/or independently wealthy candidates have a real shot at being elected.

Ralph Ferrucci was the Green Party’s candidate for Senate, and his platform, though not eloquently versed, was admirably blue-collar and progressive. He drives a delivery truck for a living, and volunteered for Food Not Bombs at a grass-roots level. You know, the kind of guy whose own healthcare would actually be affected by national healthcare legislation (I wonder how Pharma-sponsored Joe makes those decisions?).

But you probably don’t know what this Ralph guy looks like unless you caught his five minutes on the televised WFSB debate–the only one to feature all five candidates (there were FIVE candidates?!). The bombardment of political ads on television, billboards, in newspapers and wherever else, that preceded the November election did not include any from the Ferrucci For Senate camp. He couldn’t afford them. His party didn’t have any cash to spare, and his stances on health care, renewable energy and electoral reform didn’t exactly have the corporations lining up to hand him donations (which is a good thing, right?). Ned Lamont spent $4 million of his own money for ads during the primary election, and untold more in November.

Without media exposure, candidates like Ferrucci don’t have a chance. Not because they don’t have good ideas, but because elections are won with with images and sound-bites, hundreds of thousands of them to be memorized like the bad Fergie songs KC101 overplays. If you don’t remember Joe Lieberman’s voting dog or Ned Lamont’s racially diverse group of message-approvers (”And so do we!”), you were likely in a coma for the month of October. As far as the Connecticut public knew, only two and a half people were running for Senate last year (Alan Schlesinger gets a half-mention for his giant signs on the Merritt Parkway).

While part of voters’ lack of information is to be blamed on the voters themselves, and a much larger part on what the news media chose to cover, most of it is on how much media exposure a candidate can pay for. If we want real, non-corporate-sponsored representation in both local and national government, we have to find a way to take money out of the campaign equation.

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