Written for Nashua Telegraph By JAKE BERRY Staff Writer

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth in an occasional series of stories based on meetings between The Telegraph editorial board and candidates for president.

Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer ran for office as a Democrat, and he served as a Republican. But now that he’s running for president, Roemer is taking on both parties and the political establishment as a whole.

Roemer, who switched parties midway through his term as governor in the late 1980s, is running for president as a Republican, backing traditional conservative stands such as a flat tax and less business regulation. But the temporary New Hampshire resident, who has rented an apartment in Manchester, is focusing his campaign on broader issues of government corruption and campaign finance, which have plagued both parties for years, Roemer said Tuesday in a meeting with Telegraph reporters and editors.

“This isn’t a campaign about ideas. It’s a campaign about money,” Roemer told the paper’s editorial board.

“It’s a government run not by its leaders, but by their money sources,” he said. “They’re addicted to the money.”

In recent years, the country’s campaign finance system has tied candida

tes’ hands by leaving them in debt to special interest groups, which have donated heavily to campaigns, said Roemer, who served four terms in Congress before being elected governor in 1988.

This corrupt system has led to weak reform efforts in health care, banking and energy, among other areas, he said.

“These things are not accidents,” he said. “Our dependence on foreign oil, our addiction to it. … These are the forces that run America.”

But it doesn’t have to remain that way, he said.

Throughout his campaign, Roemer has turned down all funding from political action committees, and he has only accepted private donations of $100 or less. This has limited his media exposure, Roemer said. He hasn’t yet been invited to a national debate, and he was recently left off the Florida election ballot.

But it also has left him without political attachments and obligations, leaving him free to pursue real, fundamental policy changes and reforms, he said.

In Louisiana, Roemer didn’t accept money from oil companies and other special interest groups during his campaign for governor in 1987, he said. In the end he spent $1 million to his opponent’s $16 million. This left him free to overturn the corruption that had plagued the state.

“It was corrupt,” he said. “People said, ‘You can’t change it. It’s just part of the Louisiana culture.’ No, it isn’t.”

If Roemer reaches the Oval Office, he would bring real reform to the federal budget, reducing spending by $600 million over five years, he said. He would eliminate the Department of Energy, and he would bring an end to federal subsidies for oil, ethanol and unproven energy technologies.

“The government doesn’t pick winners,” he said.

If elected, Roemer would look to repeal or amend the federal Affordable Care Act, instead allowing patients to shop for insurance coverage across state lines, among other changes. And he would increase the age of eligibility for both Medicare and Social Security by two years over the coming decades.

“Entitlements, if not controlled, will break our nation,” he said.

Just as importantly, however, Roemer said he would lead the fight against government corruption by requiring that candidates fully disclose the source of all their campaign funds.

This would not only pave the way for future candidates like himself, but it would help cleanse the election process from the money that has corrupted it for so long, Roemer said.

“You need to lead a great nation and be a great woman or man,” he said. “You need to be above the petty politics of corruption. … We’re on the wrong track … and we better stand up. It starts with the money.”