In the News
The Intercept: Conservative Expert Privately Warned GOP Donors That A Voting Rights Bill Would Help Democrats
By Lee Fang and Nick Surgey
Former FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith – who founded the Institute for Free Speech, a group that opposes campaign finance regulations, and also testified on Capitol Hill against H.R.1 – joined von Spakovsky at the event. During the remarks, Smith rose and took the microphone to urge the crowd to defeat the bill.
“H.R.1 has to be stopped,” Smith said. “Presumably it will be in the Senate, but you never know when a couple of Republican senators get all weak-kneed, and it only takes a couple and it becomes a problem.” Asked by The Intercept to comment on his remarks to GOP donors, Smith said, “H.R. 1 contains complex and dangerous limits on speech, and in fact bans some speech, as we have been telling anyone who will listen. The bill must either be fixed or stopped altogether.”
Congress
Politico: House Democrats forge ahead on electoral reform bill
By Zach Montellaro
The House Administration Committee approved the bill – known as H.R. 1, or the “For the People Act” – by a 6-3, party-line vote…
It is expected to come to the House floor in the coming weeks, according to a Democratic aide familiar with the proceedings and End Citizens United Executive Director Tiffany Muller, whose organization has been strongly pushing the legislation. The Democratic aide spoke on the condition of anonymity because the floor schedule for next week has not been finalized.
The bill will likely pass the House, having already secured 227 co-sponsors, all Democrats…
[The bill] takes aim at the federal campaign finance system, overhauling the Federal Election Commission. The bill would also force so-called “dark money” groups to disclose donors, includes the Honest Ads Act (which requires digital platforms to maintain a public database of ads) and creates a publicly financed small-donor matching program for congressional and presidential campaigns…
The bill will eventually head to the Senate, where it will likely die. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has given several floor speeches opposing the bill, as well as writing an op-ed in The Washington Post decrying the bill as the “Democrat[ic] Politician Protection Act.”
The companion Senate bill is still being worked on, according to Muller, the ECU executive director.
New York Times: Testimony From Cohen Could Create New Legal Issues for Trump
By Michael D. Shear
In his prepared remarks, Mr. Cohen described in detail how Mr. Trump personally reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels…
Richard L. Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, said prosecutors could use Mr. Cohen’s description of the payments from Mr. Trump to bolster a charge of campaign finance violations.
“To the extent that these were illegal campaign finance contributions, which were reimbursed and not reported, here is more evidence that Trump was conspiring to violate campaign finance laws as president,” Mr. Hasen said.
He noted, however, that campaign finance laws – which are complex – require proof that a person was willfully violating the laws. Mr. Cohen’s testimony does not prove that Mr. Trump knew that the payments he was making were illegal – something that prosecutors would have to prove if they wanted to charge the president…
Mr. Cohen’s testimony about Mr. Stone’s conversation with Mr. Trump could also open the president up to further campaign finance violations, Mr. Hasen said.
Federal law bars campaigns from taking anything of value from foreign entities. The conversation with Mr. Stone could be used to help prove that Mr. Trump and his campaign knowingly accepted valuable help from WikiLeaks in his efforts to defeat Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“If it’s true that Stone was directly in communication with Assange while also communicating with Trump and the Trump campaign, there’s the potential for a violation of the campaign finance laws involving foreign contributions,” Mr. Hasen said.
He was quick to point out that prosecutors would need to have more evidence than just the conversation between Mr. Stone and Mr. Trump. “There are a lot more steps that we would need to conclude that Trump or the Trump campaign acted illegally with regard to WikiLeaks.”
FEC
Fox News: Payments to Ocasio-Cortez boyfriend spur FEC complaint from Republican group
By Perry Chiaramonte
A Republican group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday alleging that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign may have illegally funneled thousands of dollars through an allied PAC to boyfriend Riley Roberts.
Members of the Washington, D.C.-based Coolidge Reagan Foundation allege in their complaint that when the Brand New Congress PAC (BNC) — a political arm of Brand New Congress LLC, a company that was hired by Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to run and support her campaign — paid Roberts for marketing services, it potentially ran afoul of campaign finance law.
“It’s not illegal for [Ocasio-Cortez] to pay her boyfriend, but it appears that they created some sort of scheme to avoid claiming the money [as a campaign expense],” Dan Backer, a D.C.-based attorney who filed the complaint on behalf of the foundation, told Fox News. “What exactly did he do for that money?”
It was first reported last week that the Brand New Congress PAC paid Roberts during the early days of the Ocasio-Cortez campaign. According to FEC records, the PAC made two payments to Roberts – one in August 2017 and one in September 2017 – both for $3,000.
The FEC complaint specifically cites the use of “intermediaries” to make the payments, “the vague and amorphous nature of the services Riley ostensibly provided,” the relatively small amount of money raised by the campaign at that stage and “the romantic relationship between Ocasio-Cortez and Riley” in asserting the transactions might violate campaign finance law.
The Coolidge Reagan Foundation — a 501(c)(3) — is requesting that the FEC look into the payments for potential violations on relevant campaign finance laws that state that campaign contributions “shall not be converted by any person to personal use” and that “an authorized committee must report the name and address of each person who has received any disbursement not disclosed.”
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Post: What Warren’s latest pledge means
By Jennifer Rubin
[I]f you are concerned about polarization and extremism in politics, don’t think that you’ll improve matters by calling out larger donors. Sure, there are highly partisan donors (e.g. Tom Steyer on the left, Charles Koch on the right), but at least in this election cycle, the pressure (if any) from $2,800 donors and even from million-dollar PAC donors is in favor of electability. It’s the $50-per-month super-engaged activists who may be pushing candidates to the left. It’s the constant effort to keep those voters/donors enraged and hyperventilating that may be the greatest threat to reasoned, moderate debate.
Reliance on super-motivated small donors, one Democratic campaign veteran tells me, “is sort of like the donor caucuses. Yes, you get something valuable (money/delegates). But the process rewards moving left in dangerous ways.” The veteran adds, “That’s actually a huge and underreported dynamic of this campaign: The consultants are pushing them to take far lefty positions to generate clicks and online dollars.”
In short, it’s unclear whether Warren’s gambit will work – and if it does, if it perversely winds up proving that campaign finance reform is overrated. Rather, her new strategy might indicate a more fundamental problem with her campaign. In any event, don’t imagine that the $2,800 donors are a problem of our political system; the radicalization and polarization of ordinary voters remain the biggest impediments to sensible, rational politics. Unfortunately, there’s no easy remedy for that. (Maybe we should revive civic education and media literacy, or break the social media algorithms that promote confirmation bias.) Nixing cocktail parties and rubber-chicken dinners for upper-middle-class donors might ironically make things worse.
Washington Post: Imagine if candidates didn’t have to beg rich people for money
By Paul Waldman
When many of the Democrats running for president announced that they would not accept donations from political action committees, it was one of those things that sounds like a principled sacrifice but doesn’t have much practical impact. After all, PACs aren’t allowed to give more than $5,000 to any one candidate…
But one candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), has now gone a step further: …
Just to be clear, if you still want to write Warren a $2,700 check, she’ll accept it. There just won’t be a reception at which she’ll shake your hand, look deep into your eyes, and tell you how much she values your input on what she should do as president. She has also said she won’t be calling up donors individually to ask for donations – a chore known as “dialing for dollars,” which is loathed by every politician…
[T]he fact that she could even contemplate this move shows how the fundraising landscape for candidates has changed.
You have to give some credit for that to Sen. Bernie Sanders and his 2016 campaign. The Vermont independent showed not that you could run a campaign with mostly small donations – that had been done before – but that, under the right circumstances, you could do so and still raise enormous amounts of money. During the 2016 campaign, Sanders raised a spectacular $228 million, mostly in small donations. Then two years later, then-Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.), in what may be an even more remarkable feat, raised nearly $79 million for a single Senate race by tapping into Democratic enthusiasm around the country…
If eschewing cozying up to donors means Warren raises $100 million instead of $150 million, that’s not what will make the difference between her being the Democratic nominee or not being the nominee. There is a point at which buying a bunch more air time on Iowa TV stations just isn’t going to help. And let’s not forget that in 2016, Hillary Clinton spent nearly $250 million more than Trump (of course, he had some extra help).
The Media
National Review: No, There’s Not Too Much Money in Politics
By David French
Parts of the Left’s mockery industry are having a go at me this afternoon for a short segment I did on MSNBC this morning. The host, Stephanie Ruhle, asked me about Elizabeth Warren’s pledge not to do big-dollar donor events. I was not impressed. Then, this happened: https://youtu.be/uZnuK1HDVLw
I argued that given the stakes involved in American politics – and the high degree of voter ignorance – that I wasn’t convinced that there was “too much money in politics.” …
As I argued in the segment, money buys direct access to voters. It allows candidates to share their message without media filtering. It allows them to become household names, to define themselves, and to tell their story…
Moreover, the absence of money doesn’t necessarily mean the presence of integrity or a leveling of the playing field. Candidates have to become known somehow, and if that somehow in any way relies on the often-fickle access to cable news and their segmented audiences, then they’re only reaching a slice of the electorate. They have to penetrate the broader culture. One way to do that – in the absence of cash – is with existing fame, something that Donald Trump exploited to the hilt in 2016. In fact, his fame helped provide him with an immense earned-media advantage…
We’re talking about spending money to communicate political arguments to a continent-sized democracy of more than 300 million souls. It can take hundreds of millions to market something as inconsequential as a single movie. Spending a few billion to decide who has the authority to spend trillions is hardly a national scandal. In fact, we could stand to spend more. Outside of the political subculture, Americans often hear too little from candidates and know too little about the people they support. Let the mockers mock. We need more speech, and more speech requires more money.
New York Post: Political bias is destroying people’s faith in journalism
By Lara Logan
Journalists are not activists. We may share the passion for a particular cause, but our job is to follow the facts wherever they may lead. We can’t ignore something that reflects badly on a noble cause, as an activist might. We have to care about the means as much as the end because our duty is to search for the whole truth…
Above all, we are not propagandists or political operatives. That is not our job.
I have profound respect for my colleagues and for what we as journalists are at our best. Today, as a whole, we are not at our best. Just ask people in towns and cities across this country, as I do. Everywhere I go, people tell me they have lost faith in journalism. It comes from all people, all walks of life and all political stripes.
Frankly, I don’t blame them. Responsibility for this begins with us.
It is a fact that the vast majority of journalists in this country are registered Democrats. The colleges we come from are similarly dominated by one political ideology. This matters today because the reporting has become so one-sided. As we try to figure out why people have lost faith in our profession, let’s start by being honest about who we are.
I would feel the same way if the media were tilted in the opposite direction. It is the one-sided nature of this fight that disturbs me. Is that what the founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the first amendment?
We dismiss conservative media outlets for their political bias, but we don’t hold liberal media outlets to the same standard. Many journalists who claim to be objective have publicly taken a political stand, saying the urgency of the time justifies a departure from journalistic standards. Yet they ask us to believe their reporting is still unbiased?
The Atlantic: My Newspaper Died 10 Years Ago. I’m Worried the Worst Is Yet to Come.
By John Temple
I feel like a ghost. I have one foot in a world that no longer exists. When my students look at me, they know not the world whence I come, and it disappeared only 10 years ago. I’m a survivor of the waning days of metro newspapers with knowledgeable beat reporters, journalists who spent years developing expertise in the courts, or local government, or schools.
By July 2009, Business Insider reported, 105 had been shut down and 10,000 jobs lost. I was in the center of that storm…
Fast-forward 10 years, and I still worry that journalists are not being radical enough about how to create vibrant local news organizations, without which the health of our communities will be at risk. One new study found that a municipality’s borrowing costs increase when local reporting dies. Without journalists, the risk of corruption, of mismanagement, grows. Another study found that communities with declining coverage have lower levels of voter turnout. People need independent, reliable, fact-based reporting to help them make good decisions. Democracy can’t function without it. I won’t quote Thomas Jefferson. But if you wonder what he would have said about the matter, look it up.
Internet Speech Platforms
RealClearLife: In This Corner: How the First Amendment Can Tame Big Tech
By K.S. Bruce
The Supreme Court applied the First Amendment to a private company in Marsh vs. Alabama (1946). In that case, a Jehovah’s Witness sought to distribute religious literature on the streets of a company town – one of the giant industrial sites that included both a factory and a surrounding town, all owned by the employer. The Court ruled that the company town had become the equivalent of the public streets and parks where free speech is protected…
The same precedent was applied to protect public speech in shopping malls. This began with a case called Amalgamated Food Employees Union Local 590 v. Logan Valley, where the Court found peaceful picketing at the privately owned Logan Valley Mall fell under the First Amendment protections of Marsh.
Over time, the shopping center free speech cases were effectively reversed, except where there is a specific state constitutional speech protection…
When the application of the First Amendment to tech companies has been tested so far, the tech companies have also been spared the free speech obligations. For example, in Cyber Promotions v. America Online, (1996) a district court ruled AOL could block mass email advertisements, leading the way to spam filters…
The Court has already recognized the extraordinary role that the Internet has begun to play as the most important location for political speech and debate in our modern world. In 2017, in the Packingham vs. North Carolina case, a unanimous Supreme Court cited the First Amendment to stop a North Carolina law that made it a felony for registered sex offenders to use social media websites like Facebook and Twitter…
Other dominant locations for political speech in America, such as the broadcast networks in their heyday, were subject to free speech protections through the Fairness Doctrine or other means because they depended on government licenses to operate.
The States
New York Post: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez targets New York’s campaign finance laws
By Carl Campanile
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is getting involved in the state’s campaign finance laws, calling for limiting the influence of big donors.
“These changes to our election system are really important. In my campaign, I didn’t accept a single dollar from corporations. The average donation in my campaign was $15,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a video released by the advocacy group Make the Road New York…
“Here in New York, someone who wants to run for state Senate or state Assembly can accept more corporate donations than a member of Congress at the federal level,” said the congresswoman.
Election reformers are pushing for a public finance system that allows candidates to collect $6 in public matching funds for every dollar in small donations they receive, similar to New York City’s program.
As it happens, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced proposals this year to lower campaign contribution limits and enact the 6-to-1 public matching program…
The Legislature, controlled by Democrats, is likely to pass stricter contribution limits. The Assembly and Senate already approved a law last month to limit contributions from real estate moguls through a network of limited liability corporations.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting: W.Va. Senate Passes Bill to Change Campaign Finance Law, Opponents Say It Lacks Transparency
By Dave Mistich
Senate Bill 622 seeks to increase the limits an individual would be allowed to give to a candidate, state party executive committee and a political action committee each election cycle or year. It also offers changes to reporting requirements for funds spent in support or opposition of candidates without their knowledge.
Individual contributions to a candidate committee would be capped at $2,800 per election cycle. Limits on donations to state party executive committees would be set at $10,000 per donor each calendar year. Contributions to a political action committee would be limited to $5,000 per person per year.
All of those limits — for contributions to a candidate committee, a state party executive committee and a political action committee — currently stand at $1,000.
Senate Bill 622 would also require independent expenditure reporting to be more immediate and frequent…
The bill also would add language that would ban political donations from a foreign national. That provision, originally offered as a separate proposal (Senate Bill 276) by Baldwin, was added into Senate Bill 622 in the Judiciary Committee…
Senate Bill 622 passed the upper chamber on a 19-15 vote. Sen. Bill Hamilton, R-Upshur, broke with the majority party to join Democrats in voting against the measure.
The measure now heads to the House of Delegates for consideration.
Tennessean: Senate lawmakers weigh increasing campaign contribution limits for upper chamber
By Joel Ebert
The sponsor, Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown, said he wanted to align the campaign contribution limits for the House and Senate.
While presenting the bill, which was amended, Kelsey said, “The amendment was basically doubling the campaign contribution limits on the Senate side so that they would mirror those on the House side.”
For each primary and general election, senators can receive a maximum of $1,600 from a single person and $12,300 from an individual political action committee. Senators are also limited to an aggregate total of receiving $122,900 from all political action committees each election…
A separate measure, HB 1225 and SB 344, introduced earlier this year would increase the contribution limit for PACs. That bill, which has yet to be taken up in committee, like Kelsey’s, could be amended at any time.
Idaho Press-Tribune: Senate passes major campaign finance reform bill, 34-1; sends to the House
By Betsy Z. Russell
The Idaho Senate has voted near-unanimously in favor of SB 1113, the major campaign finance reform bill proposed by a bipartisan interim committee; the bill now heads to the House side. “The purpose of this legislation is to bring more transparency, openness, sunshine and confidence into our elections in Idaho, including local elections,” said Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, the bill’s lead sponsor and co-chair of the interim committee.
Under the bill, all campaign finance reporting, from all levels of government in Idaho, would go into a central, searchable database maintained by Idaho’s Secretary of State. Local campaigns would have to report only once they’ve either raised or spent $500. Other reforms in the bill include more frequent reporting, with monthly reports required for the four months before a primary or general election; and immediate fines of $50 per day, with no grace period, for those who don’t file on time. The bill takes effect Jan. 1, 2020.
