Guest Speakers - Southern Methodist University, TX

Rebuilding Democracy in America: Bipartisan Support for Campaign Finance Reform

Democracy Matters SMU

The event “Rebuilding Democracy in America: Bipartisan Support for Campaign Finance Reform” took place on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at Southern Methodist University in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center. Arizona State Representative Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, and North Carolina Court of Appeals Judge Donna Stroud, a Republican, both spoke about the Clean Elections systems in their states and entertained questions after their presentation.

In total, we had 75 attendees. The audience was very diverse – we had a lot of SMU students, a few non-SMU students, and quite a few non-students. There were three classes that offered extra credit for attendance (a politics class, a sociology class, and an English class), and we also worked very hard to promote the event via class announcements, announcements at other club meetings, flyers, stake signs, and basically a lot of constant networking. SMU cosponsors included the Political Science Symposium, Students for a Better Society, Association of Black Students, the Women’s Center, the University Honors Program, and the Department for Leadership and Community Involvement.

Most of the non-SMU attendees came as a result of the participation of our local Dallas Clean Elections Texas coordinator, Liz Wally. Furthermore, the League of Women Voters Dallas cosponsored the event and I believe a few attendees learned about the event from the League’s email promotion. Despite not being to raise the funds last minute, LWV Dallas brought six small cameras and filmed the event. This is awesome as it is, but it also looked great – very professional. DVDs should be available soon to distribute and share.

As for the presentation content, Representative Kyrsten Sinema began and simply told her story and described the system in Arizona, as an introduction to the concept of Clean Elections. Then, Judge Donna Stroud spoke about the system in North Carolina and even presented some comparisons of Texas and North Carolina’s judicial systems. This was especially pertinent to those of us in the audience who are involved with Clean Elections Texas, which is seriously considering pushing Clean Elections at the state judicial level. While New Mexico has passed Clean Elections at the judicial level, only North Carolina has had time to use the system. Therefore, North Carolina is an important role model for any state looking to take action at the judicial level. The two presentations complemented each other nicely, and we had some great questions at the end.

Ultimately, I wished I could have allowed each speaker about twenty more minutes to really expand on their material, share some anecdotes, make it more relevant and real to some of the students, but that simply would have made the event too long. Despite this, I felt that the speakers were received well. Having a speaker from each party was vital to the success of the event, due to the political atmosphere at SMU. Politics can become very polarized here, and I was pleased that Representative Sinema and Judge Stroud displayed such an excellent example of cooperation and respect across party.

Cody Meador
Campus Coordinator
Southern Methodist University