A PBS producer and a writer have collaborated on a book, Your America that chronicles the work of accidental activists -- ordinary Americans who saw injustice and fought to fix it, creating successful grassroots movements for change in the process. One of the stories told is that of Jackie Thrasher a Clean Elections supporter in Arizona who went on to win a seat in the state House of Representatives.

From the MSNBC article on the book that mentions Thrasher:

Jackie Thrasher’s successful run for the Arizona House of Representatives is an example of activism on a national scale. Her victory wouldn’t have happened without years of groundwork to get the money out of politics with a system of publicly financed, clean elections.T

here are organizations that promote clean elections all over the country, and they have been prime movers in the successful referendum campaigns in Arizona, Maine and elsewhere. Thrasher and other citizen legislators who have been the beneficiaries of clean elections are the muscle that keeps the movement alive and growing. Thrasher divides her time between teaching middle school and debating laws in the state capitol. You couldn’t invent a better example of a grassroots activist. She and the dozens of others who won by running clean show all the good things that happen when the torrent of private money is eliminated from elections.