In the News
Time: Meet the Man Who Invented the Super PAC
By Alex AltmanThe mastermind behind the super PAC has no regrets. “My only regret is the backlash,” David Keating says with a wry smile.Keating is one of the most influential political activists you’ve never heard of. He was the architect of a federal lawsuit that ended in a landmark 2010 court ruling that reshaped the way elections are run. The case, SpeechNow.org vs. FEC, scrapped annual limits on individual contributions to campaign advocacy groups, ushering in the era of super PACs—political-action committees that can raise unlimited sums as long as they don’t coordinate directly with parties or candidates.Five years later, campaigns are only beginning to harness the power of Keating’s creation. In the 2016 presidential race, virtually all of the candidates will have companion super PACs, many of which will wield more influence than the campaigns themselves. Candidates have leveraged super PACs to supercharge fundraising, pay for staff salaries and trips to primary states and even assume the duties once reserved for the campaigns themselves, from running TV ads and organizing supporters to direct mail campaigns and digital microtargeting.
CCP
Comments on the Federal Election Commission’s “Public Forum on Women in Politics”
By David KeatingTo the extent tax-financing programs are suggested as a tool to increase the number of women in office, the Center’s research contradicts this theory. We analyzed the number of women elected to the legislature between the 1990 and 2012 elections in two states that began operating robust tax-financed campaign programs for legislative candidates in 2000, Arizona and Maine.[6] In both states, we observed that the legislature with the highest percentage of women occurred prior to the implementation of tax-financed campaigns. Ultimately, our analysis found that, “[t]he average number of female legislators in Arizona and Maine declined slightly in both states after they began providing taxpayer dollars to legislative candidates. Both states also witnessed the highest number of women in their Legislatures before the inception of their tax-funded campaign programs, and the lowest number of women after.”[7]In Connecticut, which implemented a tax-financing program more recently, in 2008, the evidence has been strikingly similar. The Constitution State has the same number of women in its General Assembly today – 53 – as it did in the final iteration of the General Assembly before the state’s tax-financing program went into effect.[8]In light of our findings, to the extent that tax-financing programs are posited as a means of encouraging the greater involvement of women in politics, such schemes should be rejected outright. For more information about the Center’s research on Arizona and Maine’s experiment with tax-financed campaigns and its impact (or lack thereof) on electing women to each state’s legislature, I strongly encourage you to consult the Center’s attached Issue Analysis on the subject, “Do Tax-Funded Campaigns Increase the Percentage of Women in State Legislatures?”
Independent Groups
Correct the Record: Correct The Record Launches as New Pro-Clinton SuperPAC
Correct The Record, though a SuperPac, will not be engaged in paid media and thus will be allowed to coordinate with campaigns and Party Committees.
Washington Post: How a super PAC plans to coordinate directly with Hillary Clinton’s campaign
By Matea Gold“The FEC rules specifically permit some activity – in particular, activity on an organization’s website, in email, and on social media – to be legally coordinated with candidates and political parties,” Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for Correct The Record, said in a statement. “This exception has been relied upon countless times by organizations raising non-federal money. The only thing unique about Correct the Record is that it is making its contributors and expenditures public.”However, the FEC rules specify that online activities are exempted from campaign finance rules if they are conducted by “uncompensated” individuals, campaign finance lawyers noted. It is unclear how Correct the Record, whose staff will be paid, plans to navigate that restriction.“The moment anyone is paid to engage in Internet activity it falls outside of that exemption,” said Jason Torchinsky, an election law attorney who represents many conservative groups. “If you are a super PAC paying people and coordinating your activities with the campaign, you are not covered by the individual Internet exemption and are making impermissible in-kind contributions.”
NY Times: Hillary Clinton-Aligned Group Gets Closer to Her Campaign
By Maggie HabermanCorrect the Record, a group started by David Brock, a staunch ally of Hillary Rodham Clinton, is recreating itself as a stand-alone “super PAC” that has the ability to coordinate with her campaign.Correct the Record, initially run by the opposition research group American Bridge 21st Century — another Brock-connected super PAC — had been focused loosely on the goal of defending all Democrats from attacks. Now its sole mission is helping Mrs. Clinton.The new version will be run by Brad Woodhouse, a former spokesman for the Democratic National Committee who is now president of American Bridge. Burns Strider, a Clinton ally who runs Correct the Record, will stay on as senior adviser, with his role focused on reaching out to Democratic groups and campaigns.
Politico: Jeb Bush vs. Karl Rove
By Alex Isenstadt and Kenneth P. VogelBy now, after more than a decade’s worth of backstage disputes between the man who was the president’s political gatekeeper and the brother who now hopes to follow him into the White House, the frostiness has become the stuff of legend, attributable, people close to them say, to everything from personality differences to professional circumstances. Many have simply come to view them as two ambitious, sharp-elbowed men in a hurry who, at various points in time, have found themselves standing in each other’s way.Now, at the onset of the 2016 campaign, Bush and Rove find themselves on another collision course.Part of the struggle is playing out on phone calls and private meetings, as both compete for the nation’s most sought-after Republican donors. As Bush intensifies fundraising for his Right to Rise super PAC, expected to reach $100 million by the end of this month, he finds himself approaching many of the same contributors as Rove, whose American Crossroads super PAC is also financially dependent on many of the givers who have long supported the political causes and campaigns of the extended Bush family network.
Taxing Political Support
Hartford Courant: Should Campaign Donations Be Taxed?
EditorialMr. Harp’s idea might draw a legal challenge on First Amendment grounds, that taking part of a donation would inhibit a donor’s right of free speech. Assuming that giving money is a form of speech, does a 5 percent fee really keep the message from being heard? Acknowledging the possibility of a First Amendment challenge, University of California tax law professor David Gamage said the idea of a political “contribution tax,” as he called it in a 2004 Yale Law Journal article, “merits a thorough debate.”It still does. State and local governments cannot print money. The state and many towns are struggling to balance their budgets. No revenue idea should be dismissed out of hand.There are fees or corrective taxes for a host of other activities. Mr. Harp may be on to something.
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
MSNBC: The promise of super PACs outweigh the perils for Hillary Clinton
By Alex Seitz-WaldIt was a foregone conclusion that Hillary Clinton would at some point endorse the official super PAC unofficially supporting her 2016 presidential bid. But the earliness and eagerness with which she’s embraced Priorities USA has surprised many — especially since Clinton is a candidate who has made campaign reform a central pillar of her campaign.But the Democratic front-runner and her allies have concluded — probably correctly — that the promise of the super PAC easily outweighs its peril. While the move may hurt her marginally in the party primary, it will undoubtedly help her significantly in the far more challenging general election.Clinton fielded harsh criticism from campaign finance reform advocates for her decision this week to meet with Priorities USA donors. The super PAC plans to soon install a former top Clinton aide at its head. After Clinton used her first campaign event to call for a constitutional amendment to curb money in politics, the move disappointed many watch dogs.
State and Local
Montana –– AP: Montana official says Stanford, Dartmouth election experiment broke state campaign laws
By Alison NoonHELENA, Mont. (AP) — Researchers at Stanford University and Dartmouth College broke Montana laws when they sent mailers about the state’s two Supreme Court races to more than 100,000 voters in 2014, Montana’s campaign regulator said Tuesday.The postcards sent in October ranked Montana’s nonpartisan judicial candidates on an ideological scale from liberal to conservative, comparing them to President Barack Obama at one end and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at the other.Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl says the mailers amounted to election advocacy, which requires disclosure of spending and contributions under the state’s campaign laws.
New York –– AP: NY Assembly votes to close campaign finance LLC loophole
The bill would stop treating LLCs like individuals who can give up to $150,000 annually while masking identities of those who establish them and instead treat them like corporations subject to a $5,000 limit.The 120-to-8 vote followed questions by several Republicans about treating them instead like partnerships or urging broader legislation that would also set an aggregate limit on unions.
Wisconsin –– Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: State Supreme Court to release hundreds of pages in Doe probe on Wednesday
By Patrick MarleyMadison — The Wisconsin Supreme Court will release hundreds of pages of filings on Wednesday in three cases it is considering over an investigation into Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign and conservative groups backing him.Already, a plethora of information has been released about the stalled John Doe probe because of the three cases, other litigation and news reports. Whether the next batch of material will provide any significant new information is unclear.The filings before the state Supreme Court so far have mostly been withheld from the public because the underlying probe was to be conducted in secret. The court is planning to release versions of the filings with key portions blacked out, according to a letter the court’s clerk released Monday.
