BODY POLITIC

As politicians start to pass the hat for next year’s elections, voters, strapped for money during the recession, are balking at the millions of dollars spent on political campaigns. One of the strongest voices protesting belongs to Lisa Foster, 34, executive director of California Common Cause.

“The perpetual race for dollars is perverting the entire political process,” she rails. “Our priority has been and will continue to be campaign-finance reform at the local, state and national level.”

With 50,000 members statewide, Common Cause is one of the most effective public-interest lobbies in the country. Foster is harnessing that power to get finance-reform measures--including limits on personal and political-action-committee contributions and spending--onto next year’s ballots. “We are taking democracy back,” she says.

It’s not easy to brush Foster’s zeal aside. Consider her heavy-duty academic credentials: Phi Beta Kappa, Stanford; magna cum laude , Harvard Law School. Her first job was clerk to District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer, then she moved to the Center for Law in the Public Interest, where she once represented L.A.’s entire homeless population in a class-action suit against the county.

Foster wants to give people a real choice at the polls. “All our political heroes these days are overseas, people who are fighting to make their governments responsive to people’s needs--Gorbachev, Yeltsin, people in South America and the Philippines,” she says. “I can’t remember a time when we were excited about someone here. I want to see our faith in this system restored.”