In the News
Wall Street Journal: Opinion: Are Campaign Disclosure Laws Unconstitutional?
Center for Competitive Politics Legal Director Allen Dickerson on the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that state campaign-disclosure laws violate the First Amendment.
CCP
“Dark Money” Still a Bit Player (Continued): A Response to Robert Maguire
By Luke WachobFurther, the debate over issue advertising is nothing new, unlike the current “dark money” hysteria. Issue advertising has existed for decades and was not affected by Citizens United. If 2014 election spending statistics are somehow biased for not including such ads, the same is true of 2000 or 1992 or any other past cycle. In fact, we have more disclosure today than we did in those cycles: the requirement to report advertising that mentions the name of a candidate within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election (so-called “electioneering communications”) did not exist until McCain-Feingold was signed into law in 2002.Contrary to Maguire’s view, I think my methodology is more likely to overstate “dark money” than understate it. Using data from the Center for Responsive Politics (where Maguire works), I calculated all political spending by 501(c)(4), 501(c)(5), and 501(c)(6) organizations as “dark money,” even though some of these organizations voluntarily disclose information about their donors. As a result, my calculated “dark money” total is sure to include spending from groups that actually do provide information about the sources of their funding.
FEC
Washington Times: The FEC complies with the Constitution, finally
By Lee E. GoodmanAt the same time the commission brought its regulations into compliance with Citizens United, it also conformed them to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC, which this year struck as unconstitutional aggregate limits on contributions by individual citizens to federal political committees.In doing so, the commission demonstrated that it can discharge its basic constitutional duty. Public officials take oaths to uphold the Constitution. They must not resist Supreme Court decisions, regardless of whether they disagree with the court’s judgments. Indeed, some may even think that conforming our agency’s regulations to the Constitution is a perfunctory task, but the commission bogged down in gridlock over a number of issues.Five years is far too long to wait for the commission to fulfill its constitutional duty. Still, I am proud to say that the commission finally acted responsibly last week by bringing FEC regulations into compliance with the Constitution. This breakthrough was made possible through bipartisan collaboration between Vice Chairman Ann Ravel, a Democrat, and Commissioner Caroline Hunter, a Republican.
Wyoming Liberty Group: “Let’s be Real Here”? A Retort
By Steve KleinThe FEC does not lack for illustrative cases of its own. Commissioner Weintraub voted in 2012 to impose political committee (“PAC”) status upon a small group here in Wyoming—Free Speech—which aimed to spend a maximum of $40,000 (likely closer to $10,000) criticizing candidates for federal office over various issues. These were three Wyomingites looking to raise some money to take out a few newspaper, radio and facebook ads, not “multimillionaires and billionaires” looking to spend “millions of dollars.” Yet Commissioner Weintraub had no trouble imposing the most onerous and time-consuming form of “disclosure” the FEC can apply. Free Speech never spoke out.Complying with disclosure is difficult enough; the only thing worse is the penalties for non-compliance. Here, Commissioner Weintraub’s history shines, too. In 2009, she joined then-Commissioner Cynthia Bauerly in a statement of reasonslamenting that the Republican commissioners had voted not to approve a conciliation agreement with Arjinderpal Sekhon–a doctor in California who ran for Congress in 2006–ending the case with no penalty. Sekhon failed to “disclose.” He did not fail to list names or contribution amounts in his reports to the FEC, but merely the employer and occupation (see this worthwhile tangent) of most of the individuals behind the 245 contributions to his committee (that totaled less than $200,000). As the Republicans commissioners’ statement of reasons discusses, the FEC sought to fine Sekhon separately for every single failed disclosure on the list, instead of treating it as a single error. We still don’t know exactly how much the FEC might have penalized Sekhon had Weintraub had her way (insert quip about “disclosure” here), but it was likely in the thousands of dollars.Let’s be really real here. “Multimillionaires and billionaires” are among the few who can afford to retain lawyers and accountants to comply with or circumvent (that is, creatively comply with) “disclosure” regulations. While claiming to represent the will of the people in her statement of reasons (an interesting position for an unelected bureaucrat), Commissioner Weintraub sits on a commission (now longer than any current commissioner) that for far too long has served as the speech police, strangling small groups like Free Speech in red tape, punishing grassroots candidates like Sekhon and drawing a road map for state commissions that want to go after bloggers like Bailey who spend next to no money at all.
Independent Groups
Washington Times: Defending political free speech
Editorial“We can’t let this happen.” That’s the message certain federal judges sent to partisan liberals who have been bending campaign-finance laws to silence opponents in the midterm elections. Courts in Denver and Wisconsin on Tuesday issued important orders to defend free speech, and just in time.In Wisconsin, Democrats led by John Chisholm, a hyperpartisan state district attorney, filed an open-ended “John Doe” investigation obviously intended to damage Republican Gov. Scott Walker, a principled reformer running for re-election. Mr. Chisholm claims the governor coordinated speech on policy with outside conservative groups, violating contribution limits. Mr. Chisholm’s agents raided the homes of leading conservative activists across Wisconsin, seizing information to use against Republican candidates.This is nothing short of a court-sanctioned fishing expedition with witches. The groups he targeted did not, in fact, coordinate anything, but making the charges stick was obviously never the prosecutor’s intent. The Democrats wanted to conjure a cloud of “being under investigation” to hang over Mr. Walker’s campaign.
Free Beacon: Watch The 5 Most Ridiculous Entries in MoveOn.org’s Video Contest
By Andrew StilesThe leading contender thus far is, ironically, an ad produced by a conservative nonprofit group attacking liberal billionaire Tom Steyer, who is by far the largest donor to outside spending groups in the current election cycle. The ad has roughly 15 times as many votes as the second place entry.
Denver Post: Citizens United releases trailer for “Rocky Mountain Heist”
By Joey BunchCitizens United, the conservative group that brought the landmark campaign finance case to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, won the right to put out the movie before the Nov. 4 election without disclosing its financial backers from a federal appeals court in Denver this week. The Virginia-based non-profit successfully argued it deserved the same protections as other media sources and shouldn’t have to adhere to state campaign finance rules on electioneering.
Disclosure/Harassment
National Review: Houston’s Harassment of Pastors
By Ed WhelanIn an extraordinary step, the city of Houston is seeking to compel pastors to provide all documents in their possession—including all sermons as well as “emails, instant messages, text messages,” and other electronic data—relating in any way to Houston’s recently enacted “equal rights” ordinance. (The full text of one of Houston’s subpoenas is available here.) Among other things, that ordinance entitles men who think they’re women to use women’s restrooms.
State and Local
Connecticut –– CT Mirror: Elections Commission slams Democrats over campaign finance plan
By Mark Pazniokas
In unusually blunt language, the State Elections Enforcement Commission is asking the Federal Election Commission to prevent the state Democratic Party from using funds from a federal campaign finance account to pay for a mailing supporting the re-election of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.“The state party’s efforts to circumvent strong state laws are at odds with both the public good and the clear intent of the citizens of Connecticut. They are justified by neither the letter nor the spirit of the federal law. The SEEC is disappointed to see a state party committee utilizing such a tactic and respectfully requests that this Commission reject the effort in its entirety,” the commission said in a letter to the FEC.
