This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program originally airing on May 25, 2023. To listen to this program, please click HERE.
Jamie Mitchell: Thanks for joining us on another edition of Stand in the Gap Today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell, and joining me my fellow North Carolinian, Dave Kistler. Dave, between you, me, and our special guest today, we are full on Tar Heel State Blue. Are you wearing some Carolina Blue today?
Dave Kistler: Well, you’ve put me in an awkward position, Jamie. I’m a big time Alabama Crimson Tide fan, so no, I’m not wearing blue. I am surrounded by Crimson here in my studio, but I am a proud North Carolinian, just not a Tar Heel supporter, rather an Alabama Crimson Tide guy.
Jamie Mitchell: Hey, Dave. Jesse Unruh, a California democrat who held office for 40 years, the majority of the time as a state treasurer, is credited with this quote, “Money is the mother’s milk of all politics.” Just like a nursing mother is loyal to the baby, those who fill up the coffers of politicians will gain that kind of loyalty and love. Now, we do not like to hear it, but the three most important things to win an election is money, money, and money. That’s what I’ve heard in the past. In 2020, we spent $14.6 billion on presidential elections, and by the way, things are shaping up, 2024 will dwarf that record with breaking campaign finance.
Today on Stand in the Gap, we want to educate you who is both a citizen of heaven and of earth and we want to talk today about our responsibilities of citizens of earth as we engage in the election process, and part of that might be to give to an election or to a candidate, and the question is should you give and whom should you give to and what do you need to know about giving to elections and the hard to understand campaign finance laws, and to help us, another sky blue North Carolinian. Mark Walker served the US House of Representatives from 2014 to 2020. He ran in the GOP Primary for Senator Burr’s seat. He lost to Ted Budd. Mark has been a pastor; he loves the Lord. I think he’s been a guest on Stand in the Gap before. Mark, thank you so much for coming and weighing in on this very important subject.
Mark Walker: Well, Jamie, it is my privilege to be here today to be with you and Dave. Just a quick word on Dave Kistler and Nathan Kistler serving six years, 2015 and 2021 in the US House. There’s a lot of nominal Christianity, there’s a lot of showmanship, but these two guys have a rare ministry of behind the scenes meeting and praying and being a confidant with members from all across the spectrum and I applaud their work. It’s behind the scenes, it’s not for certainly any front of the page or glory to their own selves, but I just want to thank them for that and thank you for letting us be here today.
Jamie Mitchell: Well, this is an important subject and I think you’re going to be able to give us some insights. Let’s deal with it right at the top of the program, money is not evil. The love of money is and maybe it is a necessity, a necessary evil for politics. And as a political candidate a number of times, explain to our listeners why money is so important to run for office or campaigning and what are some of the hard costs in running a campaign?
Mark Walker: Well, from the local to the state, to the federal level, you need revenue, you need cash, you need the money to build name ID. Now you may have a circle of friends or a church or something along those lines. There are some possibilities to coordinate grassroots, but just the amount of money that it takes to buy t-shirts, buy supplies we’re all from North Carolina. For example, if you wanted to do a blitz in Charlotte for a couple of weeks where you’re on the broadcast and cable channels, you’re talking close to $400,000 to do a couple of weeks there, so it is specifically statewide campaigns. But even on a local level to get out, to get your name out, to get your message out, it does cost a good bit of money and you have to be able, unless you’re independently wealthy, you have to be able to find ways to raise that money to be credible in the political arena.
Dave Kistler: Mark this is Dave, I want to say thank you for the kind words you said about Nathan and myself earlier, but I want to just put that back toward you. We love and appreciate you more than you’ll ever know, your time when you served in the US House of Representatives, you represented not only the State of North Carolina well, but you represented our Savior well and for all of that we are beyond appreciative. I want to follow up with the question Jamie asked you. Obviously running for office is beyond costly and there’s a number of candidates who have accumulated a lot of personal wealth and in the course of running they spend a lot of their own money, but it does not sink them financially, but most candidates are not like that. They’re not in independently wealthy. Could you talk to our listeners just a little bit about the reality of what kind of personal cost is involved for any candidate to run a campaign?
Mark Walker: Yeah, absolutely. There’s time, there’s resources. When I ran for Congress, I wrapped up my ministry in December 31st, 2013, to run for Congress in 2014, primarily because for some of you in ministry, I mean that’s a full-time job in itself. I just didn’t know how you could do both of them because you’re on the road, you’re traveling, you’re making phone calls. I’m sitting here in office today, need to get through about 40 or 50 phone calls, try to introduce yourself. You make an interesting point for people who are not independently wealthy. I remember the second week that I had arrived I was in my DC office and my Chief of Staff comes walking in and he has this news article, and he says, “Boss, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re ranked the least wealthy member of the 114 class.” I’m going, “Well, I’ve been a pastor for 16 years. I don’t know what they expect.”
But if you do not have that independent wealth, to give you an example, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, but to give you an example, if you’re running in a regional base for a Congressional seat example, North Carolina has 14 Congressional seats. We picked up one, thank goodness New York and California and Illinois lost seats this past time, but North Carolina was one of the three or four states that picked up a seat we’ve got 14. Now, if where you are regionally would depend on the exact cost it will take to manage that campaign, for me, I averaged about a million, maybe $1.1 million for a two-year cycle of the funds that I needed to raise. Obviously not having the personal wealth, that’s part of the personal cost that we see involved in running a campaign.
Jamie Mitchell: Listen, friends, as you’re listening today, you’re thinking to yourself, “Why is this important?” I mean, when we listen to Stand in the Gap, we hear about prophecy and about corruption and about the law and about Israel. Well, this is meat and potato stuff. If we want to see things change here in America, yes, we need to call people to return to God, but we also have to get the right people in leadership. We need to have the right people in office, and if we’re going to get them in office, they’re going to have to need money, and so the fact is money is needed to run a campaign. You will not win without adequate funding, so we need you to stay here with us today and learn about campaign finances. When we come back, Mark is going to weigh in some more on some nuts and bolts on how to raise money and the right way to do it in the political world. We’re here at Stand in the Gap Today. Come back in just a moment.
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Jamie Mitchell: Well, welcome back to Stand in the Gap Today. I’m Jamie Mitchell. With me, my dear friend, Dave Kistler, and former Congressman Mark Walker discussing money in politics and what we need to know as believers to be involved and engaged, but also to be wise. The title of our program today is To Give or Not Give, Understanding Money and Politics. Mark, if you listen to the news, you will hear things like PACs or Political Action Committees. You’ll hear phrases like dark money or soft money. I want this to be educational today. I want to really inform God’s people. Can you take a few minutes and school us up on how campaign finance laws work?
Mark Walker: Sure, I’d be happy to, and I’ll do my best to stay out of the weeds. I’m not a lawyer and I used to tell Trey Gowdy that, he would say, “Quit bragging,” but I do have a little bit of understanding on some of this, and when you look at a campaign, let’s just say you’re launching a campaign. There are some different rules. You have the Federal Election Committee, FEC, if you’re running on a federal, anything for US Senate, president, US House, and then you have your state board of elections. If you’re running for maybe a state senate or a state rep or governor or one of the Council of States, different sets of rules, but primarily there’s some generalizations when it comes to how these things work.
Let’s start with the campaign side. That’s your most basic simple side, so each state, depending on if you’re running for federal or statewide, will have a maximum contribution limit when an individual gives you money. I’ll give you an example. North Carolina, for example, if you’re running for a statewide seat like governor or Attorney General, the maximum that an individual can write you a check is for $6,400. The spouse can or anybody at age 18 and over in that family can contribute $6,400. That’s the maximum, if they go over it violates campaign laws and there can be penalties and fines accordingly.
Now, where that transitions then, that’s the campaign side you also have a PAC or basically the words for Political Action Committee. Now, when you talk about PACs, you talk about different kinds. There’s soft money, as you mentioned, there’s dark money, so there’s two basic kinds. I’ll get into this much of it and try to keep it not too laborious here. You have your basic 527, which is called an independent expenditure or a PAC that allows an unlimited amount from donors that can go, we’ve had as much as maybe 250,000 a donor would put into that. Now, this kind of PAC, the donor is disclosed, their information when they gave, how much they gave. Now the difference between the campaign and this type of PAC, any campaign dollar that comes into my campaign account, I’m able to decide how it’s spent, where it goes, if I’m spending it on staff or commercial, if I’m spending on mailers, direct mail, digital mail, whatever it is, I can say where that goes.
Now, where you have to split off when it comes to this PAC that we just mentioned, where donors can commit larger money, there has to be what they call a firewall in between the two camps. The campaign is not supposed to be able to communicate with the PAC. I can help raise money to it, but that’s the extent of my authority or any dealing with it. You have to have different people set up to decide how that money is spent and where that money goes. Now, that’s the one type of PAC. I’ll add one more piece of information. There is something else that’s called a c4. By the way, none of this is tax-deductible, but a c4, you can take money from donors, you can take money from corporations, but the money is not disclosed. The donors are not disclosed.
This is where we hear the term dark money. Some of these major political organizations which spend millions and millions of dollars, maybe even in a primary over somebody that they want to see get elected. It’s very influential, especially in a primary when you can come in and drop 10, $15 million. Now, the rule is on that particular type of PAC, what we’re calling the c4, 50.1% has to go to issues, 49.9% can be spent on the actual candidate. So, in review, three basic types, you have the campaign, which has a personal limit on each individual, whether it’s federal, state, or local. Then you have the PAC, the independent expenditure. They can take as much money from both individuals and corporations, it’s just disclosed again, the firewall.
And then that third rail, which is the c4, you may have a company that wants to get behind a conservative cause or vice versa, a liberal cause, but they don’t want the public to know that they’re supporting that particular organization and therefore that name is not disclosed, but the rule is only 49.9%, 49.99 if you will, can be spent on the candidate. The other 50.1, whatever it might be, has to be spent on the issues as opposed to just being spent on the candidate.
Jamie Mitchell: Mark, this has been very, very insightful. I want to ask you two questions. The first one, just a brief answer from you, if you could, you talked about the dark money. We’ve been following the news. This gentleman out of New York, Alvin Bragg, who’s the attorney general there, a lot of people are saying he was put into office, that’s the way it’s being worded by money coming from George Soros. Is that the kind of dark money that you’re talking about?
Mark Walker: 100% Dave. We have seen George Soros be more impactful maybe than anybody in our political history, and specifically he put a lot of the dark money behind district attorneys, which would not adhere to the law, which would get outside their boundaries and be more politically driven than abiding by the law within their bounds. So, yes, that is a perfect and prime example of how dark money can impact even our local elections, if you look at district attorneys.
Jamie Mitchell: I want to go more to the donor side as far as us, the general public, there’s a lot of things that you can give to, and I think I’m on every list out there, to be honest with you, Mark. I get a lot of information come campaign time and that’s great, I don’t mind that at all. But if you ever give, you’re on a list and they’ll keep contacting you, that’s fine, but you’ve got state political committees, you’ve got national conventions, you’ve got individual campaigns. From your perspective, can you explain, you’ve already gone into a little bit of the differences, but what should we be looking for when deciding to give to any of those entities that we’ve discussed? Are there certain red flags that should tell us, “Hey, maybe this is not a good place to give money.” Other things that would indicate, “Hey, it is a good place to give money.”?
Mark Walker: That’s a great question, Jamie. First thing I would do is I would look at previous candidates this particular group, committee or organization has supported. They’ll tell you a lot of things, but that’s one of the things that you want, and if they’re all over the place, if they’re supporting people who are not holding to Judeo-Christian principle values, not to conservative values that’s a red flag for me immediately. That’s one of the things that we look at, now, a lot of times we in the political world, even the Christian world, we repel immediately about, “well, we’re not going to get involved in this.” But here’s the thing.
It’s the same kind of mindset on harvest balloting, here’s the problem if this is the law and these are the rules, we sometimes allow the left to have an advantage on us because we’re wanting to be more than noble, and I get this and I understand all that, but to use an example. It’s kind of like baseball. I grew up playing a lot of baseball and they’ve recently had some rules changed, but let’s just say if the baseball, the rules that the winter meetings, they changed at discord, in order to be able to score more runs, put more runs to the board, they’re going to go to four outs an inning instead of three outs an inning. Well, that’s the rule changes. We maybe say, “Well, we’re purist. We’re going to play only with three outs. Y’all go ahead and play with four outs.” Well, they now have a 25% advantage.
The point being here, the reason this is so good to know, and I love this topic and this program, it’s important for believers, it’s important for conservatives to understand how this process works within the law, within the context, and there are major organizations on the left really engaging and even guiding politics because of how networked they are. One of the LGBT organizations, they are very networked when it comes to getting out their message, getting out their cause, funneling their money together, being able to have some major wins we’ve seen in our politics. It’s why Christians and conservatives and people should know about this information.
Jamie Mitchell: You have about a minute. Once we give money to some of these groups, whether it’s a PAC or to an individual campaign or a national committee, is there a way for us to know that they’re actually spending it on there? Is there accountability with what they do with their money?
Mark Walker: There’s not necessarily, not when you get into the c4s there’s not, because you can see how much has been spent, but as far as getting into the details, that’s one of the things specifically on the c4, that doesn’t lay it out. You don’t know how much they’re sending to this candidate versus that candidate many times. A little bit more on that middle PAC that we talked about, the independent expenditure, if you’ve got a limited set of dollars the best way to do that is get it directly to the candidate. These other entities, if you’ve got a few hundred thousand laying around or even a few million, that’s where you can push the needle on a larger cause. But if you’re wanting to support a specific candidate as opposed to going to these entities, even some of these online formats, which take a good percentage of it, the best way to do that, if you’re wanting to support somebody, find out what that individual believes and support them directly.
To me, that’s always been the best case. At the same time, some of these organizations, we’ve got some great pro-life PACs, we’ve got some great Second Amendment PACs. We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water and a little bit later on we can talk about maybe where that influence does cross the line from time to time.
Jamie Mitchell: Now, I know the matter of money in politics can seem confusing. It can cause us great stress, but it causes you to not want to give or become skeptical. That’s why we’re having this program. It’s crucially important for us to understand the funding process. When we get back, we want to talk about the dark side of political money so that we’re aware and we can be an influence and make a difference in our nation. Come back and join us for Stand in the Gap Today.
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Jamie Mitchell: As I’ve been listening to today’s program, I realize I need to start in junior high teaching about elections and campaign funding, not to mention the basics of US civics, and that is why we’re trying to do this from time to time, to give you our listeners some insights on how our constitutional government should function. The Honorable Mark Walker from the great State of North Carolina is our guest, and we are taking a deep dive into campaign financing. Mark, if you were to ask most people about money and politics, somewhere in that conversation, the word corruption will surface. Why has there been so much unsavory activity in US history when it comes to election financing?
Mark Walker: Well, because it’s corrupt, I guess that’s one of the reasons that people feel that way is because there has been unsavory activity and we’ll get into some more as far as active members of Congress, but when you do not know exactly who’s supporting a specific or said candidate or the level of the amount of money that’s coming in, sometimes until afterwards, sometimes maybe never, that’s a problem. And here’s the thing, when you have a group or an organization that’s coming into a specific primary, it could be a general election. Let’s just say they’re dropping five, 10, $15 million there’s a reason that they’re supporting that candidate more than the other. And usually what I have seen in DC we’re talking about this unsavory activity, is once you arrive there, one of the first people that knock on your door is the people that have given you this money and they’ve got this legislation they need you to advocate for, they need you to vote this way and I’ve seen it firsthand.
I’ve received the phone calls to say, “Listen, we need you to vote this way or that way.” And that usually happens when you arrive in DC within the first three to four months that either somebody is willing or able to hold the line or they’ve been sucked in this vortex. So, the corruption does exist. It’s not necessarily black and white where they say, “We’re going to give you this money and then we want you to vote here.” But people do not give you that kind of money because they appreciate your smile or think your family photo looks good. They do that because there is an agenda in a specific incentive when you’re voting on funding to the tunes of billions and billions of dollars sometimes on a weekly basis when you’re putting budgets together of trillions, $4 trillion, there’s a lot of people with their hands in the cooking jar.
And that’s where I think sometimes the corruption surfaces in itself, and that’s why I think in my opinion, we need to know who is contributing or donating to which candidate because I think that gives us a pretty good picture of who they’re going to be answering to once they get to the US Congress, Senate and beyond.
Jamie Mitchell: What you’ve just shared is going to be a great segue for the question I want to pose, and you’ve already partially answered it, but I want to maybe ask you to delve down and dig a little deeper into it. This scenario plays out all over the United States of America. I hear from people who literally almost verbatim ask this question, how does an elected official go to Washington DC, perhaps a regular middle-class person, they serve for 25 years, 30 years, they make about $150,000 a little more give or take a year, but they leave office after three decades or so with a net worth of around $25 million. How does that happen? And perhaps maybe more importantly, is there anything that can be done about this?
Mark Walker: Well, first of all, it’s very hard for a middle-class person to get to Congress these days. Usually, it’s more of a millionaire’s club if you will. There are different times where you have somebody slips through the crack, yours truly included. But to your point, you are correct. No matter what your net worth is, how does it increase exponentially over this period of time? And one of the ways that it does that is when you’re dealing with these companies that are coming to you for funding or coming to you for legislation that would impact their bottom line, their net worth, et cetera, et cetera, you’re going to have that information before most people have and whether you do it or whether you have a spouse do it, the way you’re able to put out a portfolio, I know there’s enough [inaudible 00:24:01] maybe talking about that a little bit more, don’t want to get ahead of myself, but be able to play in that game.
That’s why I am, I believe it’s very important that if you’re going to say, “Okay, I feel like that I need to go into public service in the US House or US Senate.” I don’t believe that you should be personally or having any family member doing any trading stocks, doing any buying stocks, or selling stocks. I just think to stay above reproach, I think that’s something that you have to stay out of that because you are correct. I’ve seen it now, evidently, I didn’t open up the right door in the six years that I served there because our net worth was pretty much the same when we left Congress after six years of when we first got there. But that is a problem. Here’s what happens.
It breaks down the trust of the American people when members of Congress or politicians in general go out and say, “Hey, trust me, I’m going to go to battle. I’m going to go fight for you.” At the same time behind the scenes, I’m making good investments weeks before or month before people may have the same access in the private sector.
Jamie Mitchell: Mark, as a pastor for years, I used to tell people that sin and corruption and iniquity, the breeding ground is anonymity and opportunity. If you’re not held accountable or if you’re in unseen, hidden away places and you have the opportunity to fall in and get involved in sin, the likelihood is you are going to. And so, what you just said there about we need to know who is giving to all of our candidates that should be all out in the open. Everybody who gives to a candidate, we should know who they are. Recently, Mark, in the news, we heard of the collapse of banking institutions. We heard about stock failures, and then we hear about elected officials who had sold off those stocks just before the news broke of their failures.
It’s all very suspicious and it’s tied into this whole thing of campaign finance and money. Isn’t that considered inside information or conflict of interest and how do we get to the bottom of that? Is there any self-governing watchdog agencies who are watching this kind of thing?
Mark Walker: There are some self-governing watchdog agencies, I think was your description. They are, but you’ve got to have members of Congress willing to monitor themselves. And it’s kind of like Ted Cruz and I, we tried to get term limits put in play a maximum of 12 years, he couldn’t get out of the Senate, I couldn’t get out of the house committee. Not even close to a floor vote, even if we grandfathered some of this in. So, this goes back to knowing the candidate, doing some vetting, even though that may be for another show, is far as somebody whose life has the testimony that matches their rhetoric.
I knew this, in six years of Congress the reason I wouldn’t start a day without getting into Word first is because I knew that there would be things that you encounter, Dave has seen this firsthand up there in DC that you would encounter, beyond my intellect, beyond my instinct. And let me unpack it one more step because I think this will be important and it’s not just a Republican or Democrat thing. This is interparty; I’ll give you an example. Both Republicans and Democrats have what they call a steering committee. I served on one I was the fourth ranking member in the US House as vice chair at that time behind McCarthy, Scalise, Liz Cheney and myself.
Well, when we select or choose different committee assignments, like a chair, a chair is 19 or 20 committees, that’s a very powerful position. And I remember I was up for the top committee because the committees are ranked A, B, and C, the top committee in all of this and little inside information here, speaking of the top committee is ways and means. Three times I was up for that committee. Three times I was turned down even though I was a member of leadership because here’s the two things they look at and Republicans and Democrats both look at this. There are two books on the table from 20, 22 members in the room and they’re taking votes on who gets to serve on what committee. Because the better committee, the better you have the outside money that funds your campaign to the place you don’t have to worry about a whole lot.
But here’s the two things they look at. Number one, are your dues paid across the street? What they mean by that, in the National Republican Congressional Committee, the NRCC, all the members have these dues. As a freshman, when I got there in 2015, sworn in January, I was given a slip of paper, your dues are $200,000 per congressional cycle, which is two years. If those dues are not paid up, you are not looked at as potentially to get to serve on one of these A committees. Now, those dues could be anywhere from 200,000 to a million dollars above and beyond what you have to raise for your own campaign. The second book that they pull out and look is what is your whip score?
What I mean by that is how many times did you vote the way leadership told you to vote? And I’d always voted against the omnibus. I voted against the big spending bills because I’m from a fiscal responsibility background, but we were denied three different times. And that’s the part, you talk about some of the stuff and I get it, some people say, I get it that the money goes into a big pool and it helps out maybe members in swing states, but that’s a part of this whole money thing that really is not talked about much in the public that that’s a factor in influencing your own member of Congress and how they vote as well. When it comes to this whole side of the money and how it influences our politicians of today.
Jamie Mitchell: Mark, I’m telling you this is what demotivates people out in the main street of America from both getting involved in politics and wanting to be supportive. But at the same time, we’re doing this today, friends, so that you can be discerning. That is one of the great qualities of the Christian life that is lacking, discernment. The fact is that when you have depraved, fallen people, there is the possibility of sin, corruption, unethical behavior. We should not be surprised that we need to call people to account, shine light on this darkness. When we come back for the last segment, what wisdom is needed when considering giving a candidate money? Come join us for this last segment, Dave Kistler, Mark Walker, myself we’re talking about to give or not to give.
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Well, thank you for sticking with us as we’ve attempted to give you important information regarding elections and financially supporting candidates. Mark Walker has been our guest, and Mark, you have been on both ends of the campaign financing, both receiving and probably giving. Can you help our listeners who are thinking about giving a donation to a campaign, are there any key insights or better wisdom that you would share with them as they think through that process?
Mark Walker: Happy to do so, Jamie. What I look for is somebody who has a track record. A lot of times people know in marketing that we, as consumers will chase a shiny object, will hear something. But it’s very important that we look into the backgrounds of the people before we give them our thousands of dollars. Two things specifically that I look for is, one, what organizations does that candidate support and what kind of history does that person have in serving? Usually if you find somebody who has given their own time and treasure to support strong organizations, whether they’re faith-based or conservative organizations. And number two, does that person, do they ever get involved? Do they ever serve? Do they ever give back of their own time or do they just expect us to write them the checks?
And that’s usually if you find a person or a man or woman that’s looking to go in office and they have a history of doing some of those, it makes me feel much more better if I’m going to support them or support the organization or support the individual if they have a track record of practicing what they preach, so to speak.
Jamie Mitchell: Mark years ago, the great preacher Charles Spurgeon made this statement. He said, “The only person safe outside the sight of a policeman is the man who carries his policeman with him, and that policeman is called character.” And I think what we’ve been talking about today with campaign financing and those that use it appropriately, those that abuse it’s a character issue. I don’t want to ask a question that’s going to elicit a response that’s going to be a repeat of the last question because you answered that one so well.
But obviously you were a candidate when you were a member of Congress that stewarded God’s money well. Okay, the money that was given to you as a candidate, are there any additional things that we, as citizens should be looking for to try to discern how well a candidate or a potential candidate or somebody who’s an incumbent is going to shepherd this responsibility, this financial stewardship well so that we can have confidence in giving to them?
Mark Walker: Dave, that’s a great question and it’s a filtering question and there’s two aspects of this. If you look at a candidate or an incumbent, there’s two different ways. How are they spending those campaign funds and how are they spending your taxpayers’ dollars? I know we focus mostly on the campaign here, but if there’s frivolous spending on one side, 99.9% there’s going to be frivolous spending or overabundance. And sometimes we’ve seen campaigns be spending on personal clothes that they’ve stretched the boundaries on all the different meals and all the different things they’re going to places, staying in hotels, getting the five stars… All that is some of it, you can’t purchase clothes, but where you go and what you travel the first-class tickets and staying the five star, all that is technically legal.
But if I’m seeing somebody do that, one, that’s a warning sign for me and I think it’s very important. I know people work hard, it’s hard to get all that information, but I think it’s important for me, if you’re going to invest your hard-earned money, I would strongly suggest to look into that background a little bit in the context of how have they spent their campaign dollars so far, because those reports, every single dollar has to be accounted for when somebody is running for an office. On the state level, it’s twice a year, they have to post it, on the federal level, it’s every quarter. You can actually go down, even spending $5 on this or $100 on this you can get a little bit of an idea of the pattern on how they are stewarding those dollars and how important those gifts are to these particular said candidates.
Jamie Mitchell: Mark, that is so good. I remember hearing someone once say something like this, “If you can handle the little things, then God will give you the big things.” I think that’s a pretty good principle. If they can handle their own campaign money, then maybe we can entrust them with the big money of government. Mark, you’ve mentioned along the way in this program today, in the final minute for us as citizens, what is one thing that you think really needs to change when it comes to money and politics? And I say this because maybe some of our citizens out there should be talking to their Congressman and talking to their Senator and advocating for some of these changes to bring some integrity to finances. What can we change or what should change?
Mark Walker: Well, these are not easy changes because they have to have law changes, but one of the things that troubles me the most, Jamie and Dave, is how money from even outside of your state comes in and impacts races even down to the local level. We talked about some of the George Soros funding, but in North Carolina, and not to get into it, but we’re in a gubernatorial race and we’re probably looking at a democratic opponent, which apparently at this point, or presumptuously at this point looks like it’s going to be Josh Stein. There will be more money that comes in from New York and California than from the donors who actually would be voting for said candidate.
I say that because I have a problem with that, and I feel like at some point maybe we need to look at legislation, whether it be state or federal that limits the amount of outside money that’s coming in influencing our state or our local elections, whether it’s North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else for that matter. Because to me, that is where it has an unduly influence on electing people that does not hold the values of, in many cases, North Carolina. Most North Carolinians believe there should be limitations on abortions. People from California and New York, their legislation, they don’t believe that.
So, when you see that kind of money coming in to impact a southern state like North Carolina in providing the resources where that particular left-wing radical, excuse the language there, can have a higher name brand or can use commercials that paint him or her more as a moderate, to me, that’s a problem. That’s one of the places that I would ultimately want to push back where there’s some kind of limit or a 50/50 some kind of match where the people of North Carolina have as strong an influence of their dollars as the outside money does as well.
Jamie Mitchell: Well, we don’t normally get to have breaking news here at Stand in the Gap, but we lined up Mark to be our guest today, and there he goes this week announcing his run for the Governor of North Carolina. Mark, our prayers are with you and your family. Anyone who runs for elected office, they are either some great people of courage or they’re partially crazy, but we appreciate you and appreciate you being here today and certainly will be praying for you in this gubernatorial race.
Thank you, Dave Kistler. Again, thank you for listening and obviously we’re not advocating that you give to any specific candidate, nor are we saying that you should give. However, we think that the reality and the importance of financially supporting candidates is important because we get then people in office who can make a difference, especially if they hold our biblical values.
In whatever case we need to prayerfully and carefully support candidates, people like Mark Walker. And so, at the end of another Stand in the Gap, thank you for joining us. We share these truths to help you grow so that you can live and lead with courage. God bless you. Thanks for joining us. See us back here in 23 hours.
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