Campaign Spending Effectiveness
Bloomberg: What Campaign Donations Can’t Buy
Megan McArdle
Where are all those shadowy billionaires we were warned out? The ones subverting American democracy with their ill-gotten lucre? The lucre is being spent, in vast amounts. But $200 million in PAC funds is no match for a billionaire openly campaigning to get a hold on the levers of political power, and a neurosurgeon on book tour. No wonder Larry Lessig’s single-issue campaign to get money out of politics isn’t going anywhere.
How are Trump and Carson doing it? It’s that free media. While campaign ads may work (campaigns are certainly convinced that they do), they’re no match for getting your face on the nightly newscast. People tune out advertising, even when they haven’t gotten up to get a snack or go to the bathroom. It’s much better to have your candidate talked about on the program itself.
Politico: How to Finish What Stephen Colbert Started
Trevor Potter
Stephen’s biting satire may have increased American’s disgust with the campaign finance system, but subsequent actions by the courts and the legislature have made it much easier for the wealthiest Americans to effectively buy elections for their candidates of choice. Politicians’ ever-greater dependence on donations from the richest of the rich was made clear just last weekend by a New York Times investigation finding that “just 158 families have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House.”
Bloomberg: Biggest 2016 Advertisers Have Little to Show in Polls So Far
John McCormick
The top six Republican presidential campaign advertisers, all independent political action committees that can raise and spend unlimited sums of money, have little to show for what they’ve shelled out so far. After at least $18.5 million in television commercials, the candidates they’re backing are among those doing the worst in the polls.
Those findings, from a Bloomberg Politics analysis of broadcast advertising data, raise questions about the return on investment so far for the mega-donors mostly responsible for super-PAC financing, while also suggesting that long-held truisms of campaigning might be weakening in the face of new technology.
Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina, three candidates who have led in the polls in recent weeks despite never having held elective office, haven’t had super-PAC support on TV. Among the three, Carson is the only one to have run his own campaign ads, and at significantly lower levels than the super-PACs.
Independent Groups
Wall Street Journal: Super PACs Divert Donor Cash From Campaigns, but Can They Compensate?
Rebecca Ballhaus
The question that remains to be answered, however, is whether funds raised by super PACs can be as effective as cash that goes directly to the campaign. Super PACs can raise money without contribution caps, but are barred from coordinating spending and strategy with campaigns. That in some cases can hamper their ability to supplement campaigns’ activity.
Two prime examples of the limits of super PACs’ capabilities came earlier this year in the form of the failed campaigns of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Both governors quit the race amid fundraising struggles—Mr. Perry raised less than $300,000 in the third quarter, while Mr. Walker’s spending leaves him deeply in debt—despite the fact that their super PACs each had around $20 million to spend on their behalf.
New York Times: At Many Carly Fiorina Events, Her ‘Super PAC’ Covers the Costs
Nick Corasanti
The group has taken care of arranging tables outside events, setting up staging, gathering voter information and taking on other tasks typically handled by a campaign.
The exact amount the super PAC has saved Mrs. Fiorina’s campaign is hard to quantify, but the most recent Federal Election Commission filings offer a hint.
Of the $2.2 million Mrs. Fiorina spent last quarter, only about $27,000 was spent on the hosting of events — venue rental, equipment rental, catering and the like. This amount does not include travel, which the candidate would incur no matter the type of event.
Her rivals’ spending in this area was much higher. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida spent nearly $250,000 holding events during the third quarter. Senator Ted Cruz of Florida spent about $192,000 in the same period.
U.S. News & World Report: Washington watchdog files IRS complaint about Rubio-focused nonprofit that keeps donors secret
Julie Bykowicz
“This is an abuse of the nonprofit status,” said Noah Bookbinder, director of CREW. “They are collecting money secretly for political purposes, which you should not be able to do and in fact we believe that you are not legally able to do.”
Unlike campaigns and groups known as super PACs, nonprofit organizations are allowed to keep their donors secret. In exchange for that privilege, tax law requires that they stick primarily to nonpolitical activities.
Jeff Sadosky, a spokesman for Conservative Solutions Project, has said the group’s activities go well beyond helping elect Rubio. Its website touts the conservative accomplishments of several other Republicans.
Free Speech
New Hampshire Union Leader: Warning: Corporate speech — This page protected by First Amendment
Editorial Board
The Monitor, which editorializes frequently on the evils of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, supports this effort, and has devoted endless coverage to Lessig’s campaign.
Yet the Monitor is exercising the very rights that Lessig would eliminate. If only people have the right to free speech, as Lessig and his ilk argue, than corporations like Newspapers of New England, which owns the Concord Monitor, have no such protections.
Lessig would counter that the press enjoys First Amendment protections not granted to other corporations, which is a legal fabrication without foundation. Nowhere in the Constitution does the government have the power or ability to determine which political views are protected speech.
Wisconsin ‘John Doe’
Reason: Forced Silence
John Stossel
Modern campaign rules are so complex no one is certain what is legal. Yet one misstep is enough to get accused not just of bad political arguments, but also of “collusion” and racketeering. Raise money for a cause you believe in and get close to politicians you favor, and you may be accused of funneling illicit money to their campaigns.
In Wisconsin, prosecutors may also impose what’s called the “John Doe” rule: Don’t tell anyone that you’re being investigated, not even your kids, your spouse and definitely not the media.
Prosecutors claim secrecy is needed to “protect privacy” of people under investigation; if charges are dropped, no one need know that you had been accused. But in truth, says Eric O’Keefe, another limited-government activist who Wisconsin prosecutors investigated, “This is about shutting us up. That’s all it is. It is a speech suppression play.”
Wall Street Journal: Wisconsin Assembly Approves Legislation to Curb ‘John Doe’ Probes
Mark Peters
As part of a wider push to change the state’s ethics and campaign-finance laws, the Wisconsin Assembly Tuesday approved legislation that puts new limits on so-called John Doe investigations. A Senate vote is expected in the coming hours. The changes in the bill include restricting the length of time such probes can take to narrowing what allegations can be investigated, exempting political corruption charges.
John Doe investigations allow prosecutors to compel people to produce documents and testify while barring them from talking publicly about the probe…
The John Doe process came under scrutiny from Republicans as groups such as the Wisconsin Club for Growth went to state and federal courts to challenge an investigation into whether they illegally coordinated with Mr. Walker’s campaign in the run-up to a 2012 recall election.
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Post: New ties emerge between Trump operation and super PAC
Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger
A super PAC backing Donald Trump solicited a Trump business acquaintance for a political contribution using contact information obtained from a top aide to the real estate tycoon, according to an e-mail obtained by The Washington Post.
The donor outreach was among several new details that emerged this week linking Trump to Make America Great Again, a super PAC backing his presidential bid.
Trump has made his independence from wealthy donors a hallmark of his campaign and has said he does not know anything about the super PACs claiming to back him. Such groups can accept unlimited donations from individuals and corporations but are not allowed to coordinate directly with campaigns.
The Hill: Jim Webb drops out as Democrat, might still run as independent
Ben Kamisar
Webb said his decision stems more from the fact that his views on many issues don’t jibe with that of the party’s.
“How I remain as the voice will depend on what kind of support I’m shown in the coming weeks as I meet with people from all sides of America’s political landscape,” he said.
“Our political process is jammed up, it needs an honest broker who understands both sides.”
The States
Wisconsin State Journal: GAB: Campaign finance bill clarifies law, but concerns persist about it being fast-tracked
Mark Sommerhauser
The board’s ethics administrator, Jonathan Becker, praised the campaign finance bill for bringing state law in line with recent court rulings that have turned the law into a patchwork.
“It’s not a bad bill,” Becker said. “It recognizes the court decisions that have altered the landscape for campaign finance.”
Becker said the bill strengthens the role of political parties and legislative campaign committees, the political arms of partisan lawmaker caucuses. Such entities could accept individual contributions of unlimited amounts under the bill, as could political action committees.
Washington Post: Va. lawmaker didn’t respond to FEC warnings about illegal contributions
Fenit Nirappil
Candidates regularly receive excess contributions from donors who may not know the limits, but it is unusual to ignore warnings about them, said Paul S. Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center.
“It’s more common with low-dollar, less sophisticated and less serious politicians than with more professionalized campaigns, but it’s a bad idea for anyone to ignore the FEC,” said Ryan…
His Democratic challenger, Don Shaw, who first flagged the discrepancies in Marshall’s campaign finance, is now attacking Marshall as loose on ethics.
“It feels like he’s above the law,” said Shaw, a first-time candidate who works for a defense contractor. “In the wake of the many ethical issues we’ve had here in Virginia, our elected officials should know better.”
