Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, a onetime Republican candidate for president now seeking the nomination of both the Reform Party and Americans Elect, said he could be a problem in November for Barack Obama and the eventual GOP nominee.
"I'll tell you what my opponents don't want to have happen," Roemer tells NPR's Melissa Block. "They don't want this cotton-farming Harvard graduate to stand on the stage with them and ask them where they got their money and who do they owe their office to."
Americans Elect is a new online platform aiming to put a candidate on the ballot in all 50 states. Roemer said Tuesday that if he is on those ballots and garners enough national support to be included in the presidential debates, he could make a difference in November.
Roemer's little-noticed Republican bid for the presidency ended last month, when he left the race to seek the Reform Party and Americans Elect nominations.
During his Republican bid, he declared he would not take political action committee or superPAC money and would take no personal campaign contribution greater than $100. And changing campaign finance laws remains his top issue.
"Here's what I'm for: tax reform, budget reform, health care reform, bank reform, immigration reform, trade reform, energy reform," Roemer tells NPR. "But none of them will happen until you do campaign reform."
On Tuesday, Roemer attended a Reuters forum on money and politics with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, who predicted that the Supreme Court rulings that allowed today's superPACs will inevitably lead to "huge scandals," Reuters reports.
"What the Supreme Court did is a combination of arrogance, naivete and stupidity the likes of which I have never seen," said McCain, one of the authors of a now partially overturned law that restricted political spending by corporations and other outside groups.
"I promise you, there will be huge scandals," McCain said, "because there's too much money washing around, too much of it we don't know who's behind it and too much corruption associated with that kind of money. There will be major scandals."
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