Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig is an “incredible admirer of Bernie Sanders”, who has been “incredibly inspired by the bold ideas of what the next Democratic administration could look like” presented by presidential candidates this year.
So, of course, he’s considering a run for president too.
Lessig announced on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday that he was exploring a presidential bid based on his idea of “citizen equality”. The Harvard law professor said that if he raised $1m before Labor Day that he would officially throw his hat in the ring as a Democratic candidate for the White House.
As president, Lessig said, his goal would be to simply pass one sweeping piece of legislation to reform the electoral process which would create automatic voter registration, end gerrymandering and radically reform the campaign finance system.
Once this legislation passed, Lessig said, he would promptly resign.
To Lessig, this was the only way “to have a referendum within the constitution” and he insisted that while his plan is not “a sure shot”, it is indeed the best shot.
He also admitted that he had “indirectly” attempted to recruit others to be the standard bearer for his proposal, including former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, California governor Jerry Brown and MSNBC host and former congressman Joe Scarborough. Lessig added that he’d “love to get Jon Stewart to think about” running as well.
Lessig’s entry in the race comes as Sanders has been surging in the polls with his concern about what he calls “the billionaire class” and its ability to “buy elections”. Lessig dismissed Sanders as being concerned about “wealth equality”, which Lessig does not believe is “an issue that will rally America across party lines” the same way that Lessig’s issue of “citizen equality” will.
Lessig expressed his hope that supporters of other Democratic candidates like Sanders and Hillary Clinton would embrace his cause. “This is not an either/or campaign, this a both/and campaign.”
If supporters of other candidates realized it was possible to support two candidates at once, his path would be much easier, he said.
This is not Lessig’s first foray into politics. In 2014, he ran a Super Pac called the MayDay Pac which supported candidates from both parties who were in favor of campaign finance reform. Almost every candidate it backed lost.
