**UPDATED WITH KULONGOSKI COMMENT**

Let’s say you are [a special interest] and you’ve got a million dollars. And you’ve got 10 candidates. You give $100,000 to each of them. And you elect six. And you say, “This is a good investment.” But you also lost four. Or, let’s say you have a million dollars and you instead say, “You see that guy? People think he can’t be beat. I’m going to put all [one] million dollars against that person.” And you defeat him. Which of those scenarios do you think affects 90 legislators the most? The latter. Look, politics is always about power. The question is whether power is equally distributed. Public-sector unions have got no competition right now. They have the ability to come together in a room with a number of like-minded people and start building the base. There are about 220,000 public employees in the state. If you add in federal employees, it’s about 240,000. State, city, county, federal. Give each of them a spouse. Now I’m about up to almost 500,000. Give them each a child. Now spread the group out. I’m telling you, in a state with 2.4 million voters, that’s a powerful group.