We love ourselves some Adonal Foyle here at Public Campaign and this is why. Having just cast his first vote as an American citizen after years of dedicated activism on behalf of young voters, democracy, and Clean Elections Foyle -- who, in his spare time, plays center for the Orlando Magic -- is excited about the growing number of youth voters and aware that improving civic engagement doesn't end at the ballot box.

Foyle knows the real answer is to address how money influences politics, shuts out average voters, warps policy, and turns citizens into cynics:

I spend a lot of my time thinking about the problem of money in politics -- of how big donors -- though their contributions to candidates -- end up controlling our political agenda, even writing legislation, and blocking solutions to so many of the problems that we care about most. What today's avalanche of money into the campaigns means is that whoever is president next January will be under enormous pressure to "pay back" those donors. Lobbyists representing the interests of big contributors -- not the interests of America's young people or even the majority of the country's voters -- will be knocking hard at the door of the White House in 2009.

But here's the hope again. That young people will stay involved, stay vigilant and help provide the push back that so that the new president listens to the people who elected him or her, NOT to their funders. So our first fight is to elect someone who believes in reversing the last 8 years, but the second fight might be harder and certainly will take even longer -- making sure that that president can withstand the pressure of big donors who want to continue to control our political agenda and block change.

Adonal, and the organization he founded called Democracy Matters, are helping young people organize around combating the influence of money in politics by passing Clean Elections public financing systems at the state and national level.