Congress

The Atlantic: How to Fix H.R. 1

By Reihan Salam

[The For the People Act’s] small-donor matching program, inspired by a similar effort in New York City, sounds innocuous enough. As Richard Pildes of the NYU School of Law has observed, however, there is an important difference between the two programs. While the New York City program matches only small donations made by city residents (and not those made by people living in Palm Beach, Florida, or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, no doubt to the disappointment of the national-fundraising phenom Andrew Yang), the For the People Act does not limit matching funds to in-district contributions. Rather than mitigating the growing tendency of House candidates to rely on out-of-district donors over in-district donors, this provision will almost certainly increase it.

Given that congressional candidates already rely heavily on out-of-district donors, this aspect of the small-donor matching program might seem immaterial. But evidence shows that the rising influence of out-of-district donors has already led House members to be less responsive to their own constituents. In a recent article in Legislative Studies Quarterly, the political scientists Brandice Canes-Wrone and Kenneth M. Miller report that “when the national donor base prefers a different outcome than a representative’s general and primary electorates, overwhelmingly the member chooses the donor-favored position.” This could merely reflect the ideological proclivities of the members in question, whom you’d expect to be more in tune with their like-minded donors than a random assortment of their neighbors. But Canes-Wrone and Miller also found that “the higher the proportion of out-of-district donations a member has received in recent years, the more responsive they are to the preferences of the national donor class” and, relatedly, that “responsiveness to national donor opinion is higher the safer is the district.”

The Intercept: House and Senate Democrats Plan Bill To Add Four Justice To Supreme Court

By Ryan Grim

Congressional Democrats plan to unveil legislation expanding the size of the Supreme Court on Thursday, according to three congressional sources familiar with the closely held measure.

The Courts

Courthouse News: Seventh Circuit OKs Wisconsin Governor’s Limit on Press Access

By Lisa Klein

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers does not have to allow a right-wing think tank access to his press conferences, a federal appeals panel affirmed Friday.

The conservative John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy sued the Democratic governor in 2019, claiming the organization’s opposing viewpoint was to blame for reporters from the news section of its website being barred from attending Evers’ events.

Evers said his office simply had to limit press at events due to security and capacity issues, and that it had set up a set of neutral criteria similar to those used by Congress to determine who would be invited.

U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson, a Barack Obama appointee, granted a summary judgment in favor of the governor last year, writing in an opinion denying an injunction that “an Evers press conference is a nonpublic forum, to which Evers may restrict access using reasonable, viewpoint-neutral criteria.”

During oral arguments last October for its appeal in the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit, MacIver Institute attorney Daniel R. Shur of the Liberty Justice Center said that while he agreed the government had a right to use criteria for press access, “the criteria have been applied in a way that specifically excludes MacIver.”

The Media

New York Times: Top Bidder for Tribune Newspapers Is an Influential Liberal Donor

By Kenneth P. Vogel and Katie Robertson

Long before he emerged as a potential champion of journalism with his bid for Tribune Publishing, the Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss quietly created a sophisticated political operation to advance progressive policy initiatives and the Democrats who support them.

The organization, called The Hub Project, was started in 2015 by one of Mr. Wyss’s charitable organizations, the Wyss Foundation, partly to shape media coverage to help Democratic causes. It now has 60 employees, according to its website, including political organizers, researchers and communications specialists. Mr. Wyss and his charitable foundation are not mentioned on The Hub Project’s website, and his role in its creation has not been previously reported…

The Hub Project’s activities include organizing paid advertising campaigns that criticized Republican congressional candidates in 2018, as well as a series of marches in 2017 that called on then-President Donald J. Trump to release his tax returns. As The Hub Project’s website notes, it also developed a podcast last year, “Made to Fail,” hosted by the former Obama administration official and current CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams, that was critical of conservative policies.

As a newspaper publisher, Mr. Wyss (pronounced Veese) would be in a role very different from that of a behind-the-scenes backer of progressive causes. If he succeeds in his bid for Tribune Publishing, a chain that includes The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and The Daily News, he could help shape news coverage for millions of readers.

Fundraising

Center for Responsive Politics: GOP objectors rake in record Q1 cash

By Alyce McFadden

Republican lawmakers allied with former President Donald Trump continue to report record breaking fundraising hauls ahead of the April 15 deadline to disclose their donations. 

Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) reported raising $3 million and $5.3 million respectively from January through March. The two were the first senators to advocate against certifying President Joe Biden’s election in January.

Neither senator will face re-election until 2024, making their early 2021 sums all the more noteworthy. They’re not missing the support of corporations that chose to pause their PAC contributions to lawmakers who questioned the results of the presidential election. Individual donors contributing relatively small sums have buoyed Republicans. More than 110,000 individuals donated to Cruz in the first three months of 2021, helping him raise over three times as much money as he did at this point in 2017.

Independent Groups

The Hill: Conservatives slam ties between liberal groups, White House

By Brett Samuels

Conservative groups are criticizing ties between officials in the Biden administration and liberal outside groups pressuring it on climate change, the filibuster and other left-wing causes…

Outside advocacy organizations lobbying an administration, lawmakers or key stakeholders on policy issues is not new, and there has been an uptick in so-called dark money groups on the right and left in recent years…

But conservatives argue the groups have too much influence over the Biden agenda…

“Liberal groups spent a record amount of dark money to elect Joe Biden, and now they have insiders working in the White House who were working for the same groups that got him elected in the first place,” said Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of the conservative-leaning Americans for Public Trust.

Sutherland estimated liberal dark money groups outspent conservative groups by a 3-to-1 margin in 2018, but that it grew to 5 to 1 in 2020.

Groups like Americans for Public Trust have also taken issue with the source of funding for some pro-Biden groups. In the case of Demand Justice, the League of Conservation Voters and Protect Our Care, the latter of which launched a campaign on Tuesday to pressure Republican state officials to expand Medicaid access, funding comes through the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a dark money group that has garnered attention in recent years for its massive spending totals.

The States

The Detroit News: Benson’s office backs Unlock Michigan on not disclosing donor sources

By Craig Mauger

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office has decided a nonprofit organization that’s funded by secret donors and helped bankroll the Unlock Michigan campaign doesn’t have to report where its contributions came from.

The ruling is a boon for nonprofit groups that want to engage in political campaigns in Michigan without having to file disclosures. And Bob LaBrant, the former longtime legal adviser to the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, says “history will remember” the decision.

LaBrant filed the initial complaint and had argued that because the nonprofit Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility made a series of contributions to Unlock Michigan, the group qualified as a ballot committee itself. Under that interpretation, the group, which is tied to Senate Republicans, would have to file its own disclosures about where $1.8 million came from.

But Adam Fracassi of the state Bureau of Elections found that for a violation to have occurred, the evidence had to show that Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility solicited contributions for “the sole purpose” of giving money to Unlock Michigan.

Helena Independent Record: House endorses repeal of PAC money limits for legislative candidates

By Sam Wilson

Montana would lose its status as arguably the nation’s most restrictive when it comes to campaign finance limits under a bill that passed a preliminary vote in the House on Wednesday.

Senate Bill 224, sponsored by Republican Sen. Steve Fitzpatrick of Great Falls, would substantially hike maximum contributions from individuals and political committees to candidates for legislative and statewide offices, while eliminating limits on some campaign contributions and raising the threshold for which a contribution must be reported to state Commissioner of Political Practices.

The bill received a 69-31 vote on second reading, with three Democrats joining all but one Republican in voting for the measure. The House also passed, on a party-line vote, an amendment that further increased the campaign contribution limits already proposed in the legislation.

Austin American-Statesman: Statesman endorsement: No on Prop H on Austin’s May 1 ballot

By Editorial Board

Perhaps the most novel concept on the May 1 ballot is the proposal for Democracy Dollars under Proposition H. The measure would provide publicly funded $25 vouchers that Austin voters could donate to the mayoral or City Council candidate of their choice, in addition to the regular cash contributions that candidates collect.

Prop H seeks to address a sizable imbalance: Currently, two-thirds of the campaign contributions come from donors in just three of the 10 Austin City Council districts. Providing a mechanism for more people to donate to candidates could improve voter participation and empower more candidates to run.

We applaud those goals. It is not clear, however, that Democracy Dollars would make a meaningful dent — or that such a program would be a worthwhile use of taxpayers’ dollars. Voters who share those reservations should reject Prop H…

The Democracy Dollars proposal draws on the recommendations of the city’s 2018 Charter Review Commission and the experience of Seattle, which pioneered a similar program…

Still, the Seattle program presents other cautionary threads: One candidate was accused of trying to defraud the voucher program, underscoring the need for close oversight. And a Seattle Times analysis found that despite proponents’ promises, vouchers did not halt the flow of big money into politics.

City & State NY: Andrew Yang’s mayoral campaign is being run by a lobbying firm

By Jeff Coltin

Andrew Yang’s two campaign managers, his press secretary, his policy director and multiple senior advisers don’t actually work for his New York City mayoral campaign. They’re employed by Tusk Strategies, a lobbying firm that’s regularly hired by clients to advocate for or against bills that are being considered by the City Council and the mayor. And the arrangement raises concerns about what kind of access this lobbying firm – and the private clients that hire Tusk – would have to the mayor if Yang were to win the election. 

“We believe that it is improper for the same firm to be both a campaign consultant, and then lobby the person that they helped to elect,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of good-government group Common Cause New York. Consultants build “a special relationship of trust” with the candidate, and Lerner added they’re increasingly cashing in on that relationship.

Tampa Bay Times: Trial may expose Florida’s dark money behind spoiler candidates

By Ana Ceballos and Samantha J. Gross

An alleged election scheme that stumped Florida’s political world for over half a year is about to spill into court, as former Republican Senator Frank Artiles is set to plead not guilty and ask for a jury trial in a high-profile public corruption case.

Artiles, who will be arraigned Friday in the 11th Judicial Circuit in Miami, is facing several felony charges for allegedly recruiting and paying Alexis Pedro Rodriguez, an auto-parts dealer and longtime acquaintance, to run as a no-party candidate in Miami-Dade’s Senate District 37 race to sway the outcome of the election…

And while prosecutors have charged Artiles and Rodriguez related to the scheme, the investigation is still open, and many questions remain on whether the case could expand to other 2020 Florida Senate races that also featured mysterious no-party candidates…

Investigators are also probing who was behind $550,000 that paid for political mail pieces that advertised the no-party candidates. The money has so far been untraceable, as have portions of the nearly $50,000 investigators say Artiles paid Rodriguez.

Prosecutors have yet to name a third person who is accused of withdrawing $9,000 from a bank to give to Rodriguez.

Documents reviewed by the Herald show that Alex Alvarado, a young Tallahassee-based Republican strategist, was behind two political committees, The Truth and Our Florida, that were set up to buy political mail advertisements that praised no-party candidates as progressives in three Senate races.