When George Washington won his first election to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1758, 18 years before the Declaration of Independence was signed, he plied the 397 voters of the district with 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer and 2 gallons of hard cider for a total of 160 gallons of booze. His rival also bought refreshments for the occasion, but Washington totally outspent him; he was a rich plantation owner and a well-known guy. He didn’t even need to show up for the party.

Years later, when Washington and the other Founders were hammering out a constitution for the new country, the main basis of argument was whether government should be by and for the wealthy. It was revolutionary enough that there wouldn’t be a king. Did we want to give power to the masses, too?

Hasn’t changed much, has it, 250 years later? The debate still rages. Let’s say you’re challenging an incumbent congressman (which, by coincidence, I am). If you’re in his party — in this case, the Democratic Party — the important election is not the November election. It’s the primary election on June 3 for us Californians. If, say, in a mostly Democratic district such as California’s long, lanky 1st District, you beat the incumbent in the primary, it’s pretty much assured you’ll get the job.

Nowadays, this is called the “money primary” because the party leaders in the seven counties of the district and the news media want to see what you’ve got, in terms of money and connections, before they’ll give you the time of day. It’s the system protecting itself from regular people getting power, unchanged in all these years. It’s why, of 535 U.S. representatives and senators, only 13 are not millionaires. Can regular people expect to get equal representation in this ironclad system? Of course not, but nobody said it’s perfect and, anyway, every now and then somebody breaks through, and you get a leader who truly has the interests of his people as his top priority.

This 1st Congressional District of California is one of the few places in the country where the voters are independent enough to look past the signs and the hype and choose real change. Our former congressmen Doug Bosco, Frank Riggs and Dan Hamburg can all attest to that. We hold our representatives to a high standard here in this magical land, and money’s not always the last word.

Mitch Clogg is a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from the 1st Congressional District, which extends from the border of Oregon and California to San Francisco Bay.