In the News
The Hartford Guardian: CT Ends Contribution Cap After Court Decision
The Center for Competitive Politics has urged Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to respond quickly to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in McCutcheon v. FEC, a ruling that ensures that Connecticut does not continue to violate its citizens’ First Amendment rights.
In McCutcheon, the Court ruled that citizens could not be limited in how much they spend overall on contributions to political candidates, parties and PACs in each election cycle. To ensure compliance with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Supreme Court ruling states that the state should repeal Conn. Gen. Stat. § 9-611(c) as soon as possible.
In response, Connecticut’s Elections Enforcement Commission released an advisory opinion on Thursday, saying that it “will not enforce the aggregate contribution limits from individuals to various committees” in the state law because the law is unconstitutional under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Yonkers Tribune: CAMPAIGN FINANCING: Conservative Party Supports Taxpayers – Opposes Public Money for Campaigns
By Hezi Aris
In September 2011, Jason Farrell published a report for the Center for Competitive Politics that showed how a number of candidates and their associates, in New York City, Maine and Arizona willfully abuse the campaign finance system, exploit loopholes ensuring they can keep much of their donation money off the books, and once in office, often further abuse public funds and even find themselves under investigation for criminal conduct. The abuse of public funds is so severe and the record of corrupt practices and other misdeeds are so rampant, particularly in the city of New York (emphasis added), that such a system cannot possibly live up to the “clean” moniker that has been assigned to it by proponents.
Charitable Planning: Court Denies Preliminary Injunction in Donor Disclosure Case
The plaintiff also argued that forcing the disclosure would infringe its freedom of association, noting the AG had not offered “a particularized rationale” for requesting the information. Again, the court disagreed, saying “a merely subjective fear of future reprisals” did not sufficiently establish infringement, and disclosure would further the state’s “compelling interest” in enforcing laws against self-dealing, improper loans, and other insider dealing.
The court also noted the AG’s registry was confidential, and the plaintiff’s Schedule B information would not be disclosed publicly.
The CCP immediately filed a notice of appeal to the 9th Circuit Federal Appeals Court.
CCP
Connecticut halts enforcement of contribution cap in wake of Supreme Court decision
“We’re pleased the Commission promptly confirmed that the law was unconstitutional and announced it would halt its enforcement,” said David Keating, CCP President. “To ensure full compliance with the First Amendment, Connecticut should also repeal this law as soon as possible. We hope the legislature and governor will act soon to complete the job started by the Commission.”
In McCutcheon, the Court ruled that citizens could not be limited in how much they spend overall on contributions to political candidates, parties and PACs in each election cycle. The Court did not strike down limits on donations to any single candidate, but rather the aggregate limit on donations to all candidates. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the Court, “The Government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse.”
Amending the First Amendment
National Review: Harry’s Dirty Amendment
By Charles C. W. Cooke
Reid’s coadjutors are typically zealous in their accord. Their slogan, “money isn’t speech,” is popular among the sort of people who like slogans and who believe that chanting is a vital part of any serious political movement, and it is no doubt entrancing to the class of voter whose civic acuity is sufficiently stunted to make casting a ballot for Harry Reid seem like a reasonable way of spending a Tuesday. But, beyond brevity, it has little to recommend it. Money, after all, is merely a tool that permits other activities. In what other circumstance, pray, do we draw such a harsh distinction between the cash itself and the purposes for which it is spent? To borrow a line from Eugene Volokh, were the federal government to ban spending on abortion tomorrow, would the assembled champions of Planned Parenthood shrug their blood-soaked shoulders and lament, “oh well, I suppose that money isn’t abortion”? Likewise, if an Occupier were legally restricted from spending his money on a May Day protest sign, would we expect him to throw up his hands and to concede that it was only his bank account that was being controlled? (“Mic check: Money isn’t paper!”) Hardly. The material point here, as Volokh concludes, is that “restricting the use of money to speak . . . interferes with people’s ability to speak.”
Bloomberg: Watch the Democrats Engage in Constitutional Mischief
By Jonathan Bernstein
The constitutional amendment on campaign finance that Majority Leader Harry Reid and many Senate Democrats are pushing is a bad idea. Even supporters of strict regulation of money in politics (and I’m not in that camp) should oppose it.
Yesterday, Reid argued for an amendment on the Senate floor, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy has promised a hearing. As Greg Sargent has shown, this is part of the Democratic election strategy of running against plutocrats and focusing on income inequality and economic opportunity. Whatever its merits as campaign strategy, it’s bad policy and bad for democracy.
Independent Groups
NY Times: Billionaire Democrat Sets Eye on Senate Races
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Tom Steyer, the billionaire climate activist, recently contributed $5 million to a “super PAC” dedicated to keeping Democrats in control of the United States Senate, cementing his alliance with the party as the 2014 campaign swings into high gear.
Mr. Steyer, a retired hedge fund manager, has used some of his fortune in an effort to make climate change a more potent political issue in pivotal states like Florida, Iowa and Virginia. He is planning to raise $100 million to run campaigns on climate issues, including efforts to persuade lawmakers and the Obama administration to block the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Mischiefs Of Faction: Are the Super-Wealthy Buying Democracy?
By Seth Masket
Okay, so the very wealthy are clearly paying more. But are they getting more? That’s where the next graph comes in, which shows the estimated ideal points of several groups of donors (small donors, Fortune 500 CEOs, the top .01 percent, and the wealthiest 30 donors in the country) compared with those of several politicians. The wealthiest 30 donors appear at the top of the graph, arrayed by their ideal points:
SCOTUS/Judiciary
Wall Street Journal: Free Speech Movement
Editorial
In Wisconsin Right to Life v. Barland, Judge Diane Sykes writes for the court that the state’s “labyrinthian” speech regulation “violates the constitutional limits on the government’s power to regulate independent political speech.” The 88-page opinion, joined by Judges Richard Posner and Joel Flaum, is a tour de force that instructs state regulators in Supreme Court precedents holding that “ordinary political speech about issues, policy, and public officials must remain unencumbered.”
Wisconsin’s speech police have a long history of overreach despite periodic brush-backs by the courts, including decisions in 1999 and 2002 striking down the state’s regulation of issue ads. Yet in 2010 the state Government Accountability Board wrote a new rule to treat any ad that mentioned a candidate within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election as express advocacy. That definition improperly regulated many independent groups as though they were political action committees.
Wisconsin Right to Life sued to challenge those and other rules with the help of lawyer James Bopp. Among the laws struck down on Wednesday are the state’s ban on corporate political spending (still on the books despite the Supreme Court’s 2010Citizens United decision), the cap on how much money a corporation can spend on fundraising for a related political committee, and the requirement for lengthy disclaimers on independent political ads.
Disclosure
NY Times: Quixotic ’80 Campaign Gave Birth to Kochs’ Powerful Network
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
It was 1980, and the candidate was David H. Koch, a 40-year-old bachelor living in a rent-stabilized apartment in New York City. Mr. Koch, the vice-presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party, and his older brother Charles, one of the party’s leading funders, were mounting a long-shot assault on the fracturing American political establishment.
The Kochs had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the burgeoning libertarian movement. In the waning days of the 1970s, in the wake of Watergate, Vietnam and a counterculture challenging traditional social mores, they set out to test just how many Americans would embrace what was then a radical brand of politics.
It was the first and only bid for high office by a Koch family member. But much of what occurred in that quixotic campaign shaped what the Kochs have become today — a formidable political and ideological force determined to remake American politics, driven by opposition to government power and hostility to restrictions on money in campaigns.
State and Local
Iowa –– Des Moines Register: Iowa Supreme Court dismisses state senator’s defamation suit
By Grant Rodgers
The Iowa Supreme Court has dismissed a state senator’s defamation lawsuit against the Iowa Democratic Party and his 2010 campaign opponent.
Sioux City Republican Rick Bertrand in 2012 won a $231,000 verdict in Woodbury County that found the Iowa Democratic Party and Bertrand’s campaign opponent, Rick Mullin, smeared Bertrand in a campaign ad.
New York –– Wall Street Journal: Astorino Differs With Ally On Public Campaign Finance
By MIKE VILENSKY
Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino on Thursday lambasted a new measure allowing some political candidates to use public funds for their campaigns.
But the only candidate opting into that program is one of Mr. Astorino’s allies: Bob Antonacci, a Republican running to unseat Thomas DiNapoli, a Democrat, as state comptroller.
“That’s up to him if he chooses to do that,” Mr. Astorino, the Westchester County Executive said. “It’s my view that it’s welfare for politicians. It’s using tax dollars taken away from education aid and given to politicians for their robocalls and fancy dinners and awful mail. That’s a priority out of whack.”
New York –– NY Times: Little Time Left for Campaign Reforms
Editorial
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is busy running for re-election, but he has yet to make good on a campaign promise from 2010: to clean up New York’s abysmal campaign finance system. He can do that by coaxing the Legislature into passing a reform package that provides public matching funds for small donations.
New York’s campaign laws are so lax that a few special interests can flood any race. In Albany, most of that money goes toward keeping loyal incumbents in their seats until retirement, death or, in many recent cases, incarceration. What Albany needs is competition.
