CCP
CCP Calls on Gov. Brown to Veto Bill that Bypasses Voters
The Center for Competitive Politics (CCP) sent a letter to California Governor Jerry Brown today urging him to veto California Senate Bill 1107, which permits the State of California and its localities to subsidize candidate campaigns with Californians’ tax dollars. This action directly violates the Political Reform Act of 1974, which voters amended in 1988 to explicitly prohibit the creation of tax-financing programs in California without voter approval.
“Sacramento politicians want to illegally bypass voters and get taxpayers to fund their reelection campaigns,” said CCP President David Keating. “Governor Brown ought to veto this bill, which would violate California’s Constitution and law. If California legislators want tax-financing programs, it’s the voters who get to decide.”
Letter to California Governor Jerry Brown on Constitutional Issues with S.B. 1107
David Keating
Regardless of debates about the merits of public financing among experts and policymakers, we should all agree that the Legislature cannot reverse a key provision of a law approved by voters. Under the Political Reform Act and the California Constitution, if tax-financing is to come to The Golden State, it must be the voters who bring it. In failing to submit S.B. 1107 to the voters, the Legislature has brazenly overstepped its authority.
Senate Bill 1107 amends the Political Reform Act in a manner that does not “further [the] purposes” of the Act. For that reason, it should be vetoed.
Maine Activists Embrace Taxpayer Subsidies for Politicians in Ignorance of Systemic Flaws
Joe Albanese
In Maine, some speech regulatory activists are already celebrating the 2016 election cycle as an important milestone. Not because they are expecting higher voter turnout, more competitive races, or more women or minority candidates running for office. Rather, these activists are giddy that more politicians are taking the hard-earned dollars of Maine taxpayers to run their campaigns…
Of course, giving away free money is not an accomplishment in and of itself, unless that is the ultimate goal of the system. In which case, proponents of the program like Maine Citizens for Clean Elections should certainly pat themselves on the back. But bragging about mere participation is akin to celebrating an increase in customers in a restaurant that gives away free food.
Independent Groups
CNN: Billboard magnate pours fortune into unusual single-handed effort for Trump
Theodore Schleifer
Stephen Adams, a billboard magnate who made his fortune in a half-dozen different business ventures over the last five decades, is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a pro-Trump campaign. Yet it is not the Trump campaign or a Trump super PAC that is spending over $650,000 to boost the Republican nominee — it is Adams himself, who his buying his own billboards in a set of swing states.
It is an unusual purchase and a throwback to a previous era when the wealthy had close to unfettered control over how their dollars were spent. Adams disclosed the spending this week in independent expenditure reports almost always filed by political action committees or nonprofits, rather than individuals: $150,000 in North Carolina, $200,000 in Pennsylvania and $300,000 in Michigan.
Supreme Court
SCOTUS Blog: The Court after Scalia: Campaign finance law Wonderland
Jan Baran
Speculating about how the Supreme Court will decide future campaign finance cases is like studying Alice in Wonderland. The book is interesting but there are parts that are nonsensical, passages that are bizarre and numerous interpretations. So is campaign finance law…
…the legal complexity does not lend itself to nuanced understanding. Instead, advocates on opposite sides have developed shorthand arguments such as “corporations are not people,” “money is not speech,” and “the system is rigged.” The current political rallying cry of critics, including some presidential candidates, is “reverse Citizens United!” This implies that all will be well if only that case is reversed, that there was a reasonable if not idyllic state of campaign finance prior to Citizens United. There was not. The laws struck down in Citizens United were merely the most recent regulatory gimmicks that met an unconstitutional fate, and there are decades of prior cases in the field which created a regulatory regime not contemplated by the original laws.
SCOTUS Blog: The Court after Scalia: A new liberal Justice means a new campaign finance jurisprudence
Fred Wertheimer
A new liberal Justice appointed to the Supreme Court would set the stage for a new campaign finance jurisprudence to replace the ill-conceived and misguided campaign finance decisions of the Roberts Court majority.
A new jurisprudence would restore the Court’s broad definition of “corruption” that existed from 1976 until 2010 for purposes of upholding campaign finance laws. A new jurisprudence also would develop grounds for upholding campaign finance laws that go beyond deterring corruption and that broadly recognize the nation’s constitutional right to protect the integrity of our democracy and representative system of government.
Washington Post: Prosecutors will drop cases against former Va. governor Robert McDonnell, wife
Matt Zapotosky, Rachel Weiner and Rosalind S. Helderman
Federal prosecutors will not attempt to retry former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, on corruption charges, ending a years-long saga that rocked the commonwealth’s political class and cut short the rise of a Republican Party star…
The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia had pushed to move forward and retry the McDonnells even after the Supreme Court ruling that would have made their case substantially more difficult. But the decision ultimately rested with Justice Department higher-ups, who apparently rejected arguments from the prosecutors.
Disclosure
Barron’s: Campaign Financial Disclosure Strengthens Free Speech
Thomas G. Donlan
Harassing Speech Is Also Protected
Many Republicans are arguing that forcing nonprofits to disclose their donors is intended to make them easy targets for opponents who want to harass and intimidate the donors.
The Republican platform committee was so riled by this that it promised to fight against “requiring private organizations to publicly disclose their donors to the government.”
Weary of being attacked, the party is abandoning long-held support of full disclosure as a substitute for speech and spending restrictions. Now, they say, they are adopting a broader view. It would shut down debate.
The First Amendment quite properly says nothing about protection against harassment. The constitutional cure for speech is always more speech. If one set of politicians say nasty things against another set, that’s the political process. The voters can decide.
New York Post: Schneiderman’s a hypocrite for letting the Clinton Foundation slide
Editorial Board
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman believes in “one set of rules for everyone, no matter how rich or powerful,” his Web site says. It needs a footnote: *Except when it comes to Hillary Clinton.
Scripps News this week reported that the AG “has the power to force the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Health Access Initiative to publicly disclose” gifts from individual foreign governments — but Schneiderman isn’t using that power.
Hmm: In 2012, the AG began harassing nonprofits for the names of donors and gifts. Last week, he bragged that forcing the group Citizens United to provide such info would help him protect “against fraud and abuse.”
So why not press the Clinton charities?
Free Speech
Pillar of Law: Pillar of Law Institute Challenges “Ballot Selfie” Ban in Michigan
The Pillar of Law Institute filed a lawsuit on behalf of Michigan voter Joel Crookston in federal court today, challenging state laws and orders from Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson that prohibit camera use in voting booths and polling places. Together, these rules threaten Crookston and all Michigan voters with forfeiting their votes, fines and imprisonment for photographing their own marked ballots, a practice known as taking a “ballot selfie.”
“Many voters take ballot selfies and post them to social media sites like Facebook on election day, and it is a powerful form of free speech,” said Stephen Klein, Pillar attorney and lead counsel in the case. “Instead of just telling people whom they voted for, voters can actually prove whom they voted for—there’s just no other way to do that so convincingly. But the Secretary of State prohibits this. This is not just a case against silly rules; it’s a case against unconstitutional censorship.”
Foreign Contributions
CPI: Trump accepted illegal contribution from ‘proud Muslim’ in Canada
Michael Beckel
Nasir is a millennial who works as a software engineer. On Twitter, he describes himself as a “proud Muslim,” and he’s been involved with an interfaith group that helps refugees from war-ravaged Syria settle in Canada…
Here’s how his ill-fated Trump donation came to be: One of Nasir’s friends wanted to exercise more, so they made a bet. For each day the friend skipped a workout, he’d be required to donate to an “anti-charity,” which, in this case, was Trump.
When the moment of truth came in April, Nasir’s friend had missed enough days to owe 300 Canadian dollars. At the time, the friends calculated that amount equaled $225…
“I wanted him to feel the pain of having lost his bet,” Nasir told the Center for Public Integrity. “The donation that you discovered was made with the intent of helping my friend learn a powerful life lesson. Not with the intent of any kind of publicity or actually supporting Trump.”
FEC Memorandum: Proposal to launch rulemaking to ensure that U.S. political spending is free
from foreign influence
Ellen Weintraub
In this tumultuous political year, foreign influence on American elections has emerged as an area of great concern to the American people. A startling story this week in The Washington Post provides the latest evidence why: “U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russiaoperation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and iU.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.”
Already, we have seen reports of foreign interference with our political parties. We have seen reports of foreign hacks of state voter-registration data. And we may have spotted the tip of the iceberg in foreign political spending, the true size of which is obscured by a sea of dark money.
Candidates and Campaigns
Huffington Post: Trump Used His Companies To Mask Political Donations To Another Florida Attorney General
Christina Wilkie
The four contributions from Trump and his companies totaled $2,000 for Crist’s campaign at a time when the maximum campaign contribution allowed by an individual or a corporation was $500. At the time, Trump did not disclose that the donations all came from him, and regulators did not identify the companies as being part of Trump’s real estate empire.
The contributions included $500 from Trump himself; $500 from 40 Wall Street LLC, a company Trump controls; $500 from VH Property Corp DBA Trump National Golf Course, a Trump company that operates mainly in California; and $500 from Wollman Rink Operations LLC, a company Trump created to manage an ice skating rink in Manhattan’s Central Park.
The four contributions were first identified by the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, a group supporting Trump’s rival, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
The States
Miami Herald: Judge orders campaign-finance question put on Miami-Dade ballot
Douglas Hanks
A judge Friday ordered that Miami-Dade voters get a chance to decide on new rules for campaign donations, reversing a decision by county commissioners to keep the measure off the November ballot because of alleged legal flaws.
Circuit Court Judge William Thomas ruled the union-backed group behind the proposal to ban county contractors and their lobbyists from donating to county candidates followed all the required steps to secure a ballot slot.
County lawyers promptly appealed Thomas’ decision, setting up a showdown next week before the Third District Court of Appeal in western Miami-Dade.
Rochester Democrat & Chronicle: New York’s ‘ethics reform’ fails to deliver
Poughkeepsie Journal Editorial Board
This is how weak and potentially ineffective the state’s new “ethics reform” law is expected to be.
A host of good-government groups actually urged Gov. Andrew Cuomo not to sign it. Ouch!
The governor and state legislative leaders in particular only have themselves to blame. They waited to the last possible moment to do anything about ethics reform, then cut a half-baked deal under cover of night and behind closed doors.
The Oregonian: Portland reconsiders public money for political campaigns
Brad Schmidt
Portland taxpayers may once again cover campaign costs for political hopefuls if incumbent Commissioner Amanda Fritz has her way.
Fritz wants to dangle the promise of public money to candidates who agree to limit campaign contributions and spending.
The program — dubbed Open and Accountable Elections — would provide a sizable public match for private contributions and could cost taxpayers up to $2 million overall in a busy election cycle.
Washington Times: Initiative seeks changes to state campaign finance system
Rachel La Corte, Associated Press
Washington voters will soon decide whether to make the most sweeping changes to the state’s campaign finance system in decades.
Supporters say the ballot question – which also creates a publicly funded voucher system for political contributions – makes much needed reforms in order to bring more accountability to the system. But opponents say it will use tax dollars to benefit politicians while the state remains under a court order to put more money toward basic education.
