Daily Caller: Liberals’ Latest Effort To Resist Citizens United
By John Ryder
In 2016, Multnomah County, Oregon, passed, and voters approved, a measure which created contribution limits, expenditure limits, registration requirements, and disclosure requirements for spending related to county races. The expenditure limits provide that individuals and entities may only spend money if the money was collected subject to the contribution limits.
The new rules also limit aggregate independent expenditures per election cycle for individuals and political committees, impose no independent expenditure limits on small donor committees, and completely prohibit independent expenditures by all other entities, including corporations and non-profit organizations.
The primary problem with this misguided effort restricting constitutional rights of political speech is that it ignores not only Citizens United but also 40 years of settled campaign finance case law…
Multnomah County filed a petition for validation of the rule in Oregon state court in May. The Taxpayers Association of Oregon, represented by the Center for Competitive Politics, is seeking to intervene in the case and has masterfully outlined the legal problems with new rules and with the rule’s supporters’ arguments.
