The venerable Capitol Hill publication Roll Call has long editorially supported the cause of campaign finance reform, but typically with a nuance and skepticism lacking from the simplistic editorials of such publications as the New York Times or USA Today, and it has for years covered the issue with reporters such as Amy Keller and others who presented the issue in a fair and unbiased fashion.
Unfortunately, the paper’s June hiring of Eliza Newlin Carney, formerly of National Journal, to cover this beat casts serious doubt on Roll Call’s ability to continue to provide unbiased coverage of the issue. Carney has long been one of the most biased reporters on the campaign finance beat, and her early reporting for Roll Call suggest that nothing has changed.
Carney’s story on yesterday’s FEC decision in Advisory Opinion 2011-12 (Majority PAC) is typical of her reporting. She can’t even get past the first clause of the first sentence before repeating one of the favorite untruths of the “reform” community. She begins, “In an unusual show of unanimity, the Federal Election Commission has rejected a bid by conservative lawyer James Bopp Jr. to directly challenge the longstanding ban on soft money fundraising by federal officials.”
An “unusual show of unanimity?” Surely Carney knows that of the 12 advisory opinions taken up by the FEC this year, 7 have been unanimous decisions (two were 5-1; one decided 4-2, and two broke down 3-3, with one of those two leading to a second, compromise 4-2 vote). Now, we suppose that “unusual” is a word open to interpretation, but we’ve never heard it applied to something that happens over 50% of the time. But maybe Carney is simply means that 58% unanimity is rare compared to 2010, when the Commission was unanimous in 21 of 30 initial votes on Advisory Opinions (70%), and then reached unanimity on two more after an initial 3-3 vote. Another 4 Advisory Opinions in 2010 were decided with just 1 dissenting vote.
For years, reformers have found it in their interest to try to emphasize the idea that the FEC is hopelessly divided and regularly splits on partisan lines. This fits their longstanding meme that any problems with the law are merely the lack of an effective enforcement mechanism, rather than a hopelessly complex law, muddled objectives, and a long series of judicial setbacks. While it is true that in recent years the FEC has had more “deadlocked” (that is, 3-3) decisions and fewer unanimous decision than usual, Carney has been on the beat long enough to know that this particular “reform” claim was and remains hogwash. One has to assume she repeats it because she doesn’t care – she’s in the tank with the “reformers.”
Next, note that Carney calls this a “longstanding ban.” Now again, “longstanding” can be viewed as a weasel word with lots of room for interpretation. A 9 year old, for example, typically thinks something in place for eight years has been around forever, whereas a 50 year old might think that’s a short time. And that is how long the “longstanding” ban on officeholder solicitation of soft money has been in place – all of 8 years and 8 months, or four election cycles of the more than 100 election cycles that have taken place since the Constitution took effect. But reformers typically like to suggest that their view of a highly regulated market for political speech is and has been the norm in the United States, rather than a relatively recent development. This in part explains their repetition of the claim that Citizens United v. FEC overturned “a century” of precedent, when it actually overruled a case less than 20 years old, or the idea that the limitation on officeholder solicitation of soft money is “longstanding.”
Carney concludes that the FEC’s action was “something of a rebuke to Bopp,” a well-known and influential critic of campaign finance regulation. Now, perhaps the Commission has changed since I was a Commissioner, but I don’t recall us ever “rebuking” anybody in our Advisory Opinion (or other) decisions. We saw it as our job to enforce the law and, in the Advisory Opinion context, to answer specific legal questions. But reformers have long liked to call any victory for regulation, no matter how trivial, a “rebuke” to their ideological (and pragmatic) opponents. This, too, is part of the effort to delegitimze opposition – to suggest that those offering alternative explanations of the law were not merely wrong, or at least unsuccessful in the courts or at the FEC, but were “rebuked,” as in “admonished;” “reprimanded,” “criticized sharply.” Their position was, by implication, illegitimate, insincere, untethered to any reasonable interpretation of the law. Of course, the FEC no more “rebuked” Bopp yesterday than it rebuked Stephen Colbert’s lawyer, card-carrying reformer Trevor Potter, earlier in the day by rejecting portions of Colbert’s AO request. Of course, when the Commission rules against the “reform” community – which they apparently do often enough that the “reformers” have spent most of the last 30 years decrying the Commission as “FECkless” (ha ha!, good that one!) or the “Failure to Enforce Commission,” or “gridlocked,” that is never considered a “rebuke,” but merely evidence of the “problem.” But perhaps it was the “reform” community that was rebuked yesterday. Indeed, as Bopp noted after yesterday’s 6-0 vote, the FEC’s Opinion in 2011-12, his request, ended up as close or closer to his starting point as to that of the “reform” community.
As for Roll Call, that’s a lot of bias packed into a 357 word article.
It’s not for us to tell Roll Call how to run its business, but if they hope to retain credibility on this issue, they will look for a less partisan reporter to cover it. Carney writes well and there are probably beats she can handle with greater objectivity.
