And now to erase in this region. There are three candidates vying for the first congressional district seat, incumbent Richard Neal and challengers Andreanusaforo and Bill Shine. Shine told Jim Madigan why he's tossed his hat into the ring. Principal reason is that we are four years into an economic collapse, a Wall Street fueled economic collapse, and you look around and see that we have not really addressed the problems that we have. We have corporate profits now, setting records. We have the bailed out banks doing just fine, but we look around and we see unemployment 25 million Americans without work or under employed. We see long-term unemployment setting records. And we have to ask why is that? Why haven't we done enough? And I think the reason is that we need transformational political change. We need to change the way we fund our elections. Our democracy is a wash in corporate money, in money from a very narrow segment of our society. And that money is narrowing the agenda. It means the ideas that we need both in terms of political change, but economic fairness to address wealth inequality, to do a lot of the things that we need to do, including address one of the moral issues of our time, which is climate change. Why aren't we doing what we need to do? I believe it's because that money has narrowed the range of what even comes up for a vote in the United States Congress. So I'm in this race running a very different kind of campaign, only raising small dollar donations. And dollars are less. And making the case that we need a clean break from all of that money, the old way of doing things so that we can have the broad conversation about issues that is necessary to really solve the problems that we've got, particularly on economic and environmental issues. Let me ask you, with all due respect, you are a writer, a humorist. You've won some awards in that area regularly for the Berkshire Eagle. You were involved with the Occupy Movement this past fall. And getting into a race such as this, where there are two declared candidates, one, a 22-year veteran of the U.S. House of Representatives, the other veteran state senator now holds a county office in Berkshire County. These are two people that have been there, done it, got quite an organization, and quite a bit of money. Challenging that is tough, no matter what. Here you come first time, really, in a political race. Are you running to win or are you running, really, to open the debate up to some of the issues you just talked about? I think the way to win today is to recognize that across Western Massachusetts and across the country, we need a different way of doing things. Folks that have been in politics their entire life, folks that raise money from those same sources, they're not providing the solutions. And we need to have new kinds of folks running for office, broadening the discussion, because if we keep electing the same kind of people in the same kind of way, who rely on the same sources of money, we're just going to get the same unacceptable results. And the money issue is substantial. You know, it's certainly driving the Occupy movement. It has become the conversation about how do we break the stranglehold of all of that money on policymaking? Because as I said, we have seen policymaking that has bailed out banks, that has served wealthy interests, lowered tax rates, made sure that they have recovered very quickly from a crisis that they helped to create. Meanwhile, the rest of us are looking at lower wages, long term unemployment, and many unaddressed issues. So the real question here is, what are those who have been in politics for a long time ready to do differently? I really do want to spend a lot of time on issues, because that's only fair. But one more political question, let me ask you, you're out of Berkshire County, great barrington, I believe. The other challenger, if you will, in this race is Andrew Nusaforow, also from Berkshire County. The establishment candidate, I guess you'd say, in this race is the current Congressman Richard Neal in the newly configured first district. Doesn't a second candidate, and assuming it stays at three candidates, which is a pretty broad assumption, this is only to race, but doesn't a second candidate coming out of Berkshire County more or less split whatever vote there might be against Congressman Neal and make it that much easier for the incumbent to stay in? Not in the least. What we have now is a new district. This is a, you used to call it a reconfigured district, it's a new district. I'm offering Western Massachusetts a chance to elect a real, bold, outspoken, progressive to the United States Congress. My views are in alignment with Western Massachusetts, the new district, I believe in public financing of elections. I believe we need to dial back corporate personhood so that we can break that stranglehold I was talking about. You mentioned that those, the other two candidates are establishment candidates. As I said, we've had enough of establishment politics. It's not solving our problems. When you've got Congressman Neal, who last year raised $676,000 in 2011, 80% of it from political action committees almost exclusively corporate tax. The balance of his money comes in large contributions, $500, $1,000, $2,500 from registered lobbyists. Who is who of lobbying firms in Washington? The amount of money he raised last year in small contributions of less than $200, incredibly was only $1,910. That is, three tenths of one percent of his money comes from regular people like us. That to me is an example of what is wrong with this system. That money narrows the agenda. It buys silence on the big issues. It's why we do not have a representative in Congress from Springfield right now, who is championing the kind of progressive change that we need, the transformative political change we need, public financing of elections. Like I said, an end to the revolving door on lobbying. These things need to change. And until you have someone who doesn't accept any of that money, doesn't play that game, and agrees with, I think, a lot of people in Western Massachusetts that it has to change, we're not going to see progress. You talked in one of your early announcements about your candidacy about promoting economic development that creates and quoting robust local enterprise. I know it's early in your campaign, but give us an idea if you can of something you would do, whether it's in the halls of Congress or as an official locally to try and do that sort of thing to create, to spur the economy in the area. Sure. An example right here in Springfield, the Wellspring Initiative, which is modeled after what's happening in Cleveland, where they are creating large-scale, worker-owned businesses to serve the needs for products and services of what are called anchor institutions, your hospitals, big colleges, and other things. We want to keep the money that they spend local. So let's create an invest in local enterprise owned by people in our communities, owned by the working folks who work there, and have them build up businesses that serve those interests. In Cleveland, they've done it in a section of town with a high rate of poverty. They are helping people create wealth. It is a path out of poverty. It is a way to build local business that stays there. These are not companies that are national chains. They're not based elsewhere. The profits stay there. The talent and skills of people that are trained in those companies stay there. The Wellspring Initiative is going to try and replicate that right here in Springfield. I think it's a great model. It's economic democracy, and we need that as much as we need political democracy to make sure that we build economic fairness and an economy that works for everybody. You talked about limiting contributions to $99, not taking any PAC contributions, lobbyist contributions. You're pledging a neighbor to neighbor campaign. We say that will challenge everything about the way politics is done today. Take a minute. Tell us how you envision that going between now and the Democratic primary in September. Sure. Well, we started this campaign barely two weeks ago. We've said from the beginning, only $99 contributions and less. It's going to be a volunteer fueled campaign. We've already signed up over 100 volunteers. We're going to go door to door. We're going to be making phone calls. We're going to be organizing in communities in a way that I think will last beyond this campaign. That's important. We need to focus on organizing folks locally to take action, not just in electoral politics, but in all sorts of issues of concern to them locally. I want to help build that. I want this to be more about more than just a campaign. The way you do that is not with millions of dollars of television ads. You do that by going door to door, by talking to folks, by listening to what the issues of concern are in individual communities. We're going to do that a lot. We're also going to use a lot of social media. We're going to be online. I'm not going to spend money on television ads. What can you say in a 30-second ad on television, with all due respect to television, if you're at connecting point? We're not commercial. That's okay. It's anything you want. So, I want to find a way to win an election without big money. That's going to mean finding new ways of doing things. And that's going to be one of the lessons of this campaign is that if we want change, we have to do it without big money. If we don't have big money, we need new ways to run campaigns. So we're going to figure out how to do that. Bill Shine, candidate for the Democratic nomination in the first congressional district. Thanks for being with us, sir. It's been my pleasure. Thank you.