Many of the famed comedian W.C. Fields’ best lines came at the expense of Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. But for lovers of free speech, there’s only grim humor in Philadelphia’s mayoral race, where the failures and threats of campaign finance regulation are again on display.
It seems that awhile back, Philadelphia passed itself a nice, tough campaign finance law, with strict limits on campaign contributions. Finally, Philadelphia politics would be "clean." Then along came Tom Knox, a wealthy, self made businessman, and something of a poor man’s Michael Blumenthal, who threw $5 million of his own money into the race for mayor. Well, you can imagine what happened next. Or maybe you can’t, so we’ll let the Philadelphia Daily News tell the story:
"With his four rivals hobbled by new city campaign-finance limits, Knox has dumped more than $5 million of his own money into his campaign, most of it for TV ads that portray him as a poor-boy-made-good who wants to wrest City Hall from Philadelphia’s corrupt pay-to-play culture.
"Knox has outspent [U.S. Representative Bob] Brady on TV ads by nearly 5 to 1 and [U.S. Representative Chaka] Fattah 10 to 1 as he’s moved from dead-last to top of the polls."
It seems that the only thing that could stop Knox was a well-conceived "527" organization operating free from the debilitating burden of the City’s campaign finance law. A pact with the devil was made, and "527" groups indeed appeared on the scene, prepared to knock Knox. But with Philly on the verge of a competitive race, J. Shane Cramer, Jr. swung into action. Mr. Cramer, interim head of the city’s Ethics Board, announced this week that he "planned to conduct an ‘initial inquiry’ into the activity of several so-called 527 political organizations to make sure they are truly independent of the candidates."
All this has a slightly humorous ring to we here at CCP, but it’s scary as well. Cramer’s announcement indicates the chilling role that government regulation can have even on legal speech. According to the Philly Examiner, one reason for the decision is that one of the 527s has been running ads calling Knox a "fake," and this is "the same word used in a recent attack ad by U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, one of Knox’s rivals in the May 15 Democratic primary." Oooh. This is evidence of coordination used to launch an investigation into the activities of citizens involved in politics? I mean, how hard is it to watch Brady run an ad calling Knox a fake, and decide, "hey, the theme is Knox is a fake – let’s use it"? Not very, we think. Coordination investigations, as you can see, can be triggered with very little effort, and are among the most intrusive of investigations. For in order to find out if coordination has occured, it is necessary to subpoena records, depose witnesses, gain access to campaign strategy to find out just who has talked to whom, and what was said.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out in Philadelphia, but however it plays out, it won’t be, we suspect, what the supporters of campaign finance regulation had hoped for.
