It's commonly known that wealthy men involved in politics like staying under the radar.
Perhaps that is why an ABC reporter was arrested for
attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel.
And perhaps that is why so little was reported when a Colorado millionaire (or is it billionaire?) explained last week to a caucus at the Democratic National Convention how he intended to buy support in state legislatures to advance his favorite political cause.
Software magnate
Tim Gill, speaking at the LGBT Caucus on August 25, said the audience of some 274 delegates and sympathetic activists should emulate the tactics of his Gill Action Fund. Gill, you see, targets state and local legislative races by funding the opponent of any politician who is an outspoken critic of LGBT politics.
Local races are cheap, especially races in other peoples' rural states.
"Just a little bit of money goes a long way," Gill said,
according to this CNA article.
He added that this strategy chokes off his opponents' talent pool before its members can rise to prominence.
This is obviously major news. The story concerns an influential Colorado personality speaking at a major national event hosted in Denver.
Money, strange sex, and politics are involved. What could make for a better story?
Yet Gill's speech received only three lines in the Rocky Mountain News, and no mention at all in the Denver Post.
Why is that?
Like all ideologues, Gill characterized people who disapprove of his ideology as "bigots." The better word is, I think, "critics." Perhaps many in the media agree with Gill and don't want to give critics knowledge of his strategy before it has come to fruition.
By a sad twist, Gill's single-issue efforts to boost his faction's political power only increase a form of "homophobia," to use that empty and overused word. If politicians are remaining silent only because they fear Tim Gill and his political allies will back their opponents, Gill is actually spreading phobias.
Think of it: you're a legislative candidate who has bucked your party to go after corruption. You have a few good ideas about how to make your state better, and people who meet you like you.
But then your opponent gets a huge influx of campaign money because your ordinary sexual ethics offend a billionaire with an influential mailing list.
Does that kind of raw power promote the general welfare? Is that not the "politics of fear"?
Why doesn't Gill combat his opponents in public discussion and debate? Do his monetary resources outweigh his skills of rational persuasion?
Maybe. Calling one's opponents bigoted is a rhetorical trick, not a rational argument.
Gill's crusade against people who criticize his sexual misbehavior and his activist causes is a deliberate, half-covert attempt to avoid public debate by throwing money around.
They say we have the best democracy money can buy. Is Tim Gill the proof?