In the News
RNLA: Threats to democracy, real and imagined
By Paul Jossey
Plutocrats, these “reformers” counsel—unsatisfied with their already enormous wealth—are trying to “buy” America and “drown out” the voice of the little guy. Money buys “access” and “undue influence,” corrupting the system and threating the very foundation of democracy. Indeed so dire the threat, it can only be remedied by overturning a key a portion of the Bill of Rights—an unprecedented move according to famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams who testified at the same hearing.
Mr. Reid is, of course, wrong. Money does factor into electoral and legislative outcomes, but it is far from the determining or even most important factor. And proof is more abundant than a recent Virginia primary where the loser outspent his opponent 26-1. In 2012, only 20% of competitive Senate campaigns with an overall spending advantage won. The latest social science bolsters this thesis, a fact acknowledged from as diverse sources as former Obama White House Counsel Bob Bauer and the First Amendment friendly Center for Competitive Politics.
But unlike Mr. Reid’s empirically challenged posturing, genuine threats to the American political system exist. IRS Commissioner Jack Koskinen recently exemplified one in Congressional testimony about missing documents House investigators had subpoenaed months ago. Mr. Koskinen sat defiant as he ducked, parried, and obfuscated. His answers, and the arrogance with which he conveyed them, are emblematic of a bureaucracy whose dual mission is self-preservation and the ardor for power; what Peggy Noonan called “the ongoing shakedown operation that is the relationship of the individual and the federal government.”
Roll Call: Hobby Lobby Ruling Fuels Amendment Push
By Eliza Newlin Carney
“It’s going to take a comprehensive approach to campaign finance reform to make sure that elections are in the hands of people and not corporate voices,” said Tester spokeswoman Marnee Banks.
Conservatives reject proposals to amend the Constitution out of hand, arguing that the Udall-Bennet measure is over-broad and would free Congress and the government to arbitrarily silence American citizens.
“If adopted, Sen. Udall’s constitutional amendment would help entrench those in Congress by insulating incumbent politicians from criticism and from granting members of Congress unprecedented power to regulate the speech of those they serve,” said David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month.
Statesman Journal: Letter: Merkley tried to suppress voters’ voices
By J.E. Murray
The letter urged the IRS to give special attention to applications from certain conservative organizations seeking non-profit tax status. This letter was dated February 2012, more than a year before complaints filed against the IRS in May 2013 for harassment of conservative organizations.
The harassment took the form of IRS demands for special and burdensome information requests not required from liberal organizations and, in some cases, arguably protected, personal information about contributors. These complaints against the IRS led to an ongoing congressional investigation especially memorable for the testimony of an IRS executive named Lois Lerner who took the protections afforded by the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying to Congress.
Statesman Journal readers deserve to know just how far their U.S. senator will go to suppress the free speech rights of voters who disagree with him. The details of the ethical complaint and a copy of the letter Sen. Merkley co-signed can be found online at the Center for Competitive Politics website.
CCP
Limiting “Coordination” Between Citizens Groups?
By Brad Smith
That’s a pretty tough road to hoe. Surely – I think – the mere fact that X PAC gave to Candidate Smith does not mean that Group Y cannot operate an IE PAC – even if Group Y has the same objectives as Group X, and even if Group Y talks with Group X about their shared goals and even election plans. The state would have to prove that Candidate Smith was using Group X to coordinate with Group Y – a factual determination. But the idea that you could simply prohibit Group Y from operating an independent expenditure PAC because it *might* coordinate with Candidate Smith through Group X seems off the rails.
Does this change because Group X and Y are organizationally related in some way? I think not. See Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC (“Colorado Republican I”). In fact, it’s even McConnell v. FEC, the all-time favorite decision of reformers, which nonetheless held that Congress could not force political parties to choose between doing either independent expenditures or coordinated expenditures (i.e. contributions). Citizens United? We don’t need no stinkin’ Citizens United.
Now, the Court does note that VRTL chose not to contest the state’s evidentiary record showing the extent to which its independent expenditure PAC and its traditional PAC were intermeshed. But none of that record (at least not described in the Court of Appeals opinion) would actually show that any expenditures were coordinated with the campaign. Again, see Colorado Republican I. More importantly, so long as coordination is illegal, certainly organizations may be investigated for illegal coordination. But I don’t think that the law can presumptively hold that two organizations are coordinating. It’s got to be proven. Once again, that’s Colorado Republican I.
Incumbency
NY Times: Assigning a Dollar Value to Being the Incumbent
By Derek Willis
Investor donors will shift their donations to incumbents of a different party, something ideological donors don’t typically do without some policy shift from the candidates. “This is evidence that access-motivated contributors change their contribution patterns based purely on incumbency status in a way other donors do not,” the authors wrote. The research doesn’t answer the ultimate campaign finance question of what donors get for their contributions.
They did, however, discover another feature of incumbency. The financial advantage did not continue to accumulate as incumbents continued to win. “This bump you get as the incumbent pretty much happens the first time you become the incumbent,” Mr. Hall said in an interview. That’s because the companies considered it an investment. “Even though the district was very competitive that one time you won, you’re then expected to be around for a very long time,” he said.
IRS
Wall Street Journal: House Lawmakers Press on IRS Probe
By John D. McKinnon
Mr. Hill said lawmakers will renew their demands for documents that the department has so far withheld. They also want to explore when the department learned that the IRS had lost two years’ worth of emails belonging to Ms. Lerner, who has been a focus of the probe and who is now retired from the IRS.
If Justice investigators didn’t find out about the lost emails before other officials, that could fuel arguments that they haven’t taken the matter seriously, congressional aides said.
At a minimum, committee Republicans hope their efforts will highlight the department’s inaction, and lead to increased demands for the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Wall Street Journal (LTEs): IRS Should Meet the Standards It Demands of All of Us
It is becoming clearer by the minute that the IRS blatantly disregards the standards that it expects the rest of us taxpayers to adhere to as evidenced by the stack of records taking up space in three of my file drawers dating back to God knows when. What really gets my goat is IRS Commissioner John Koskinen’s arrogant intimation that if you want us (the IRS) to do our job properly, give us more money. As we dig deeper into this catastrophe I’m afraid that we will find that the willful thinking in this organization that it is above the law goes from top to bottom. The lack of action on behalf of the attorney general suggests that not only is there more than a smidgen of corruption in the IRS, it is rotten to the core. I expect an audit shortly.
NY Times: I.R.S. Comissioner John Koskinen, on Hot Seat, Has History of Bureaucratic Rescue Jobs
By Alan Rappeport
At a Capitol Hill hearing, Republican members of Congress pressed him about emails missing from the hard drive of Lois Lerner, a former agency official at the center of a scandal over the scrutiny of applications for tax-exempt status. They wanted to know if he had any evidence that a crime was committed in the destruction of the messages.
Mr. Koskinen seemed fed up. “I have no evidence whether she beat her dog, whether she beat children,” he told them, his voice rising. “I have no evidence of a whole series of things.”
For nearly four hours at the June 23 hearing, Mr. Koskinen, a Yale-trained lawyer who says he gave up practicing law for Lent one year and never looked back, absorbed cascades of verbal salvos and tossed back several of his own. Hired to rehabilitate an agency that went awry targeting political groups, Mr. Koskinen’s style — quick-witted to the point of being flip and sometimes impolitic — has left some wondering if he is the right person to restore the I.R.S.’s battered credibility.
Independent Groups
Election Law Blog: Big Campaign Finance News: Second Circuit Accepts Limits on Contributions to Independent Campaign Committees in Some Circumstances, Creating Circuit Split
By Rick Hasen
Today a unanimous Second Circuit panel issued an 84-page opinion in Vermont Right to Life, Inc. v. Sorrell. Most of the opinion is devoted tor rejecting a number of arguments raised against Vermont disclosure rules applied to independent groups. This is quite consistent with the rulings of other courts since Citizens United: most disclosure challenges have failed.
SCOTUS/Judiciary
Delaware Online: Hobby Lobby harmful effect on campaign funding
By David Skeel
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s impassioned dissent in the Hobby Lobby case warns about the “startling breadth” of the court’s holding that some for-profit corporations have religious freedom rights. She, like social justice attorney Sandra Fluke, is worried about a wave of religious freedom claims by other corporations. But another possible outcome of the case may be more to her liking: Hobby Lobby could eventually force the court to take a more sympathetic stance toward campaign finance regulation.
Here’s the connection to campaign finance. In the Citizens United decision striking down restrictions on independent expenditures by a corporation shortly before an election, the court emphasized that the protection for free speech in the first amendment does not distinguish between human speakers and corporations. It says simply that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” The court also rejected the suggestion that some corporations — such as for-profit media corporations — should be treated differently than other corporations for free speech purposes.
Disclosure
Wall Street Journal: Charts: The Clintons’ Well-Oiled Fundraising Machine
By Rebecca Ballhaus
Their fundraising success in the last two decades could give Hillary Clinton a hefty financial advantage in the 2016 election—if she runs—prompting concern among Republicans that her extensive war chest will allow her to take an early lead in the race.
The Clintons have raised between $2 billion and $3 billion since 1992 from individual donors, corporate contributors and foreign governments, a Wall Street Journal analysis published Wednesday found. At least 75% of that—between $1.3 billion and $2 billion—came from industry sources, defined as donors contributing $200 or more.
Lobbying and Ethics
The Hill: Pelosi to Ethics panel: Require lawmakers to report free trips
By Mike Lillis
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called Tuesday for the Ethics Committee to reinstate public disclosure requirements when lawmakers take privately funded trips.
The Ethics panel this year quietly scrapped the requirement that lawmakers report such travel on their annual financial disclosure forms, as they’ve done for decades, National Journal reported Monday.
The furtive change prompted an outcry from good-government groups and campaign finance advocates, who have long criticized the cozy relationship between Congress and the private groups and individuals who frequently sponsor trips for lawmakers and their staffers.
FEC
Roll Call: FEC Seeks Answers From Pro-Cochran Super PAC
By Kent Cooper
The federal agency regulating and monitoring money in federal elections is seeking answers from a pro-Cochran Super PAC regarding what appears to be campaign finance violations.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has sent a Request For Additional Information (RFAI) to Mississippi Conservatives, a Super PAC supporting the re-election of Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss. The committee has until August 1st to respond, or the failure to do so “could result in an audit or enforcement action.”
The FEC letter states the committee may have failed to file one or more of the required 24-hour report(s) regarding “last minute” independent expenditures. Specifically, the committee did not file a 24-hour report for a $15,000 payment on May 30th to Scott Howell & Company as an independent expenditures against Chris McDaniel, R-Miss.
State and Local
Massachusetts –– MassLive: Gubernatorial candidates split on high campaign donation limits for unions
By Shira Schoenberg
In an unusual alliance, Republican Charlie Baker and Democrat Don Berwick support lowering the amount of money unions can give to political campaigns. Democrat Steve Grossman opposes the move and Democrat Martha Coakley said she is “open to reviewing” donation limits.
The issue came up recently due to a bill in the state Legislature that would amend the state’s campaign finance laws to increase contribution limits from $500 to $1,000 per individual. The bill would also increase disclosure laws so corporations, labor unions and other entities have to disclose their expenditures and their donors within seven days.
