Running on empty

I am referring not to Bielat but to all the holier-than-thou types who are running around town nickering about how campaign funds are supposed to be for advertising and strategists and not to allow the candidate to live.

That’s all well and good but for one unfortunate fact. You the public, you the taxpayer, were paying Frank his full $174,000 congressional salary every day he was campaigning for reelection. You were paying him for every meet-and-greet, grip-and-grin, and canned event along the way.

For that matter, you were paying the salaries of the other eight members of the state congressional delegation who ran again, as well as every state representative seeking reelection, state senator, the governor, the treasurer running for governor.

It’s the obscene nature of an absurd system that is so stacked in favor of the incumbents and so wildly against anyone who has the audacity to challenge them that it is nothing more than a massive impediment to meaningful change.

Incumbents get all the breaks. They raise far more money than their opponents, outspending challengers by roughly 3 to 1 in the 2010 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington. They often solicit the very industries they are charged to oversee. Frank, as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, raised well over $1.5 million from the financial world.

And then there’s the fact that incumbency means never missing a paycheck. There is no expectation whatsoever that they will take a leave from their jobs or even an unpaid day for their campaigns.

But challengers? There are precious few businesses that will pay an employee to run against a powerful incumbent, meaning challengers from outside the entrenched system will collect no salary.

I reached out to Phil Johnston, the former state Democratic Party chairman, about this, Johnston being that rare politico who relies not on talking points, but logic and experience. He ran for Congress and lost a heartbreakingly close race in 1996, and when I brought that up, he grimaced.

You see, he left his job with the federal government to run. “Nine months to a year,’’ he said when he was asked how long he went without a paycheck. “I’m not rich. I don’t have money.’’

Then Johnston added: “It’s so hard for anyone from the outside to run unless you’re rich. It’s a perversion of what the Founding Fathers intended.’’

And here’s the result: The average House member in Washington had a net worth of $5.3 million at the end of 2009, the average senator $12.6 million. Three of our last four elected governors in Massachusetts have been multimillionaires.

I have nothing against the rich. I wish I was one of them. But I’m not sure I want the government dominated by people who see a whole lot of commas in their finances where regular, ordinary people see little more than need.

Back to Bielat, a young Republican. He quit his job with iRobot a year before the election, giving up what he said was a $163,000 salary. Cash-strapped with a newborn at the end of the race, he gave himself $10,000 for living expenses — .4 percent of the $2.4 million he raised.

This is legal. He did, though, make the mistake of waiting just long enough so the payment wasn’t disclosed until the campaign was over. This is shady.

There’s no shame, nothing to hide, in good people needing money to survive as they offer their ideas and ideals to the voters in a challenge to the status quo. Just declare upfront the intention and the amount, then let contributors and voters decide if you’re worthwhile.

The alternative is incumbents and rich people, typically one and the same, with a monopoly on power — pretty much the way it is now.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.

Correction: Because of a reporting error, an earlier version of this column misspelled the name of former state Democratic Party chairman Philip Johnston.