What functions do campaigns serve for democracy?

Campaigns are how people get their name out. How you get your political/moral stances out. This way the general public can find out what the candidates are like. Though extremely important and very helpful there are some draw backs. Campaigns cost a lot of money and people who have higher funded campaigns tend to do much better then others. So people are desperate for money and often there is suspicious of people making there stances specifically to a line with groups who put forth high funding for campaigns who agree with them. Also its hard to tell if a runner is saying something for votes or if he actually thinks what he said, due to how many people they have writing there speeches and telling them what to do to get elected. But despite all this Campaigns are incredibly important.