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Unfortunately, money in politics is an insidious thing - and a loophole in our campaign finance system was taken advantage of with money going to existing or new 527 groups with the sole purpose of influencing the election.

Much of what candidates have to do is raise money and appeal to constituencies or interest groups that can provide that money.

It's important not to limit the amount of their own money that candidates can spend, but to give other people access to enough money to run competitive races.

When you put money directly to a problem, it makes a good headline. It makes a good campaign slogan. You get to claim that you've engaged in these activities within an election cycle. But certain investments take longer than an election cycle.

The reality is that asking the public to fund political campaigns accomplishes nothing. Candidates continue to seek interest-group support through other channels, both financial and in-kind, and corruption problems abound.

Money is the fuel that makes political victory possible. Sadly, folks, in many cases it's more important than ideas. And this is what turns off so many people to politics.

More money is being spent on our elections, with less disclosure of where that money is coming from, than ever before.

All elections revolve around and are often resolved by who raises the most money. That's unfair. I'd like to see that process changed, but it seems once you win and get to Congress, that doesn't happen.

There's no doubt that there's a public backlash against the way campaign money is raised, but I don't think the only alternative is to elect people with money.

What happens traditionally in a campaign is they will go out to their list once or twice a week to raise money from their fund-raisers, but when a candidate gets to a general election, you get some donor fatigue because they've already maxed out their campaign to give.