In the News
National Review: Democrats’ Bad-Faith Attacks on Neil Gorsuch and ‘Money in Politics’
By Luke Wachob
Bernie Sanders is demanding that Judge Gorsuch explain his “opposition to campaign finance reform.” Jeff Merkley is accusing conservatives of “packing the court” and threatening “the rights of ordinary citizens to have their voices heard in elections.” Sherrod Brown has already announced that he will vote against Gorsuch, saying, “I cannot support any nominee who does not recognize that corporations are not people.”
These attacks are beyond misleading. “Court-packing” brings to mind politically motivated efforts to increase the number of justices on a court, not the routine filling of a vacant seat. And so-called corporate personhood has been enshrined in law for centuries and is almost universally accepted by jurists. But there’s an even better reason to take these criticisms with a grain of salt.
These same senators voted in 2014 to amend the Constitution specifically because their idea of “campaign finance reform” could not exist under our current Constitution. In fact, 54 Democratic senators voted in favor of an amendment giving Congress nearly unlimited power to regulate political speech, effectively gutting the First Amendment.
Westword: Jon Caldara: Supreme Court Case Failed Because Antonin Scalia Was Murdered
By Michael Roberts
No, Caldara isn’t among the loony conspiracists who actually believe that Scalia, a conservative stalwart on the court who died in his sleep at age 79 circa February 2016, was assassinated by stealthy liberals. But beneath this joke is a serious point. The Independence Institute’s appeal failed because not enough Supreme Court justices agreed to hear the case – four must sign on to what is technically known as a writ of certiorari, shorthanded as cert – and as a result, a 2014 decision against the organization by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was allowed to stand. But Caldara is confident that if Scalia were still alive, or if Colorado-born Neil Gorsuch, recently nominated to the Supreme Court by President Donald Trump, had been confirmed and was filling the currently vacant seat, cert would have been granted and the Institute would have emerged victorious.
In Caldara’s mind, the question at the heart of the Independence Institute’s 2014 lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission is, “When do you lose your First Amendment rights? And should your First Amendment rights be subservient to a calendar?”
Satellite PR News: Controller Yee Appoints Ethics and Elections Attorney to FPPC
California State Controller Betty T. Yee today announced her appointment of ethics and elections attorney Allison R. Hayward to the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC).
The FPPC is a five-member independent, nonpartisan commission responsible for administration of the state’s Political Reform Act, which regulates campaign financing, conflicts of interest, lobbying, and governmental ethics…
Hayward currently serves on the board of the Office of Congressional Ethics of the U.S. House of Representatives. Previously, she was vice president of policy at the Center for Competitive Politics, an assistant professor at George Mason University School of Law, and chief counsel to Commissioner Bradley A. Smith of the Federal Election Commission. Hayward has practiced election law in California and Washington, D.C., and she is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court Bar, as well as the American Law Institute. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Danny J. Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
CCP
Former FEC Commissioner Ravel Admits Her “Dysfunction” Narrative is Unfounded
By Joe Albanese
When asked about the Commission’s historic functioning since being created after Watergate, Ravel first claimed that the FEC worked very well until more recently. But, notably, she conceded, “it’s never been a really active agency as far as I understand.”
This comment is extremely telling. Ravel has spent considerable time publicly decrying current Republican commissioners as obstructionists, who have, in her eyes, managed to “gridlock” the agency and thus enforcement of campaign finance law. Yet, if the FEC hasn’t been a “really active agency” for most of its history, what is she comparing the activity of today’s FEC to?
Ravel has argued that the FEC has deadlocked on enforcement votes more frequently as of late, but if her characterization of FEC history is true, it could very well be a result of the FEC’s increased activism in recent years, as evidenced by her own desire to expand beyond the reach of written law, judicial precedent, and the FEC’s actual mission. To someone who wants vastly increased powers for an administrative agency, any check on authority must seem like inconvenient “gridlock.”
Allison Hayward, formerly Vice President for Policy at CCP, has been appointed to a four-year term on California’s Fair Political Practices Commission by State Controller Betty Yee. Allison’s extensive background-as a professor (little known fact: her academic writing was cited in the majority opinion in Citizens United v. FEC, as was an amicus brief she wrote for a group of campaign finance scholars), a practioner, as Counsel to Commissioner and CCP founder Bradley Smith at the Federal Election Commission, and as a member of the Office of Congressional Ethics of the U.S. House of Representatives-makes her incredibly qualified for the position. But beyond her experience, Allison will bring to the FPPC a measure of skepticism of utopian schemes that is too often lacking in campaign finance enforcement. As a Republican Allison will be outnumbered on the FPPC, but if coalitions can be built, Allison’s wit, intelligence and good faith will make them happen.
Congratulations to Allison and the people of California.
Supreme Court
Quartz: A US Supreme Court discussion of free speech and social media got comically postmodern
By Ephrat Livni
During oral arguments this week in a case before the US Supreme Court, the justices mostly seemed to agree that access to social media is worthy of constitutional protection.
And why shouldn’t it be? The web, and specifically social media, is where civic life happens now. As justice Elena Kagan put it, “Everybody is on Twitter.” (She was referring specifically to people in US government-senators, governors, the president.)…
Kagan and her fellow justices were hearing arguments in Packingham v. North Carolina, a case challenging a state law limiting individual social media access for violating freedom of speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment…
The justices must decide if the First Amendment right to freedom of speech extends to the internet, and if so, to what extent the government can limit an individual’s online access. The individual here is Lester Packingham, who pled guilty to statutory rape when he was 21, served his sentence, and remains a sex offender for life.
Under North Carolina law, he is forever prohibited from accessing commercial social media.
FEC
American Prospect: The FEC’s Open Hostilities, Dysfunction, and Intimidation Foreshadowed the Trump Era
By Eliza Newlin Carney
Regardless of who replaces Ravel, the FEC has managed to foreshadow the Trump administration’s governance model, which favors cabinet heads who openly disagree with the missions and regulations of the agencies they run. The FEC is a “portent” of what will now happen throughout government, Ravel warned, namely that agencies will eschew transparency and accountability, serve big donors and not the public, and engage in “purposeful polarization.”
The FEC has also become the poster child for the intimidation and muzzling of any government executive who doesn’t agree with the administration, another hallmark of the Trump era. When Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub used FEC letterhead to call on Trump to substantiate what she called his “astonishing voter-fraud scheme,” Republicans pounced. The conservative watchdog group Cause of Action Institute went so far as to ask the FEC’s Inspector General and its Designated Ethics Officer to investigate whether Weintraub violated rules that require federal workers to use government resources only for “authorized purposes.”…
True, the FEC transferred its election administration assets over to the Election Assistance Commission, established in 2002 by the Help America Vote Act.
Independent Groups
Mic: These watchdog groups just accused Donald Trump of breaking campaign finance law
By Celeste Katz
A pair of watchdog groups are accusing President Donald Trump’s campaign of breaking federal law by illegally taking contributions after Election Day and falsely reporting them as going toward debt that didn’t exist.
The Campaign Legal Center and Common Cause filed a 19-page joint complaint with the Federal Election Commission that alleges the Trump campaign wrongly attributed “millions of dollars in contributions for the 2020 presidential primary election to debt retirement” for the 2016 race – meaning to pay back debt from the election that just ended…
The CLC and Common Cause noted that “federal law provides that a candidate may only raise funds after Election Day to retire outstanding debts from the election, or for a future election.”
But that’s not the whole story. “The Trump campaign ended the 2016 election with no outstanding net debt – therefore, all contributions made after Election Day should have either been refunded to contributors or designated for the 2020 primary election,” the statement said.
Donors
Boston Globe: Boston law firm could be charged on donations
By Andrea Estes and Viveca Novak
State campaign finance officials plan to ask Attorney General Maura Healey to consider criminal prosecution of partners at Boston’s Thornton Law Firm, saying they have evidence that the firm illegally reimbursed lawyers and their spouses for up to $175,000 in campaign contributions to state candidates and causes…
If the case is indeed referred to the attorney general, it would mark the first time state officials sought criminal penalties for straw donations.
The allegations, if proven, would make this one of the largest reimbursement cases in US history, if not the largest – both in terms of the total amount of money involved and the length of time over which the scheme was carried out, said Brett Kappel, an election law expert at Akerman LLP, a Washington, D.C., law firm…
Thornton Law Firm’s lawyers have insisted the reimbursement system was legal, since the lawyers were being repaid out of their equity – or ownership – in the firm. At a hearing before Sullivan Wednesday, a private accountant argued that the reimbursements – recorded as “bonuses” in the law firm’s payroll records – were actually deducted from each partner’s “capital account” at the firm.
Politico: Trump courts donors with eye on 2020
By Shane Goldmacher, Kenneth P. Vogel, and Darren Samuelsohn
Candidate Donald Trump waged a bitter fight with some of the Republican Party’s biggest donors, but President Trump is assiduously courting some of those same donors as he tries to consolidate control of his party and begins preparing for an expensive reelection campaign in 2020…
Several major GOP donors told Politico that Trump has shored up their support through his team’s outreach, as well as his performance in this week’s address to Congress.
The speech is “going to have a positive effect on donors,” predicted Michigan real estate investor Ron Weiser, a former RNC finance chair who served on Trump’s inauguration committee. “People who might have some questions before about where he’s going, now it’s pretty clear. They like the fact he was very presidential,” said Weiser, who is headed to the RNC donor retreat.
Senior Trump advisers acknowledge the contact with donors, particularly those who did not support Trump, but insist it’s not so much Trump doing outreach as responding to the deluge of donors who wanted on the Trump train, starting election night.
The Nation: How Wealthy Donors Drive Aggressive Foreign Policy
By Sean McElwee, Brian Schaffner and Jesse Rhodes
Our research suggests that a major, if under-appreciated, base of support for the frequent use of American military force abroad is the enthusiasm of wealthy persons – and especially large political donors.
On several key questions, wealthy people – and, in particular, “elite donors” (those who contribute $5,000 or more, or the top 1 percent of all donors) – are much more enthusiastic about the projection of American force than are American adults. The enthusiasm of the most wealthy and influential private actors in American politics provides a durable reservoir of support for the assertion of American power abroad. Given the profound, and likely growing, influence of political donors in American politics, our findings suggest that strong political supports for American foreign interventionism will remain long after Bannon, and Trump, have departed the executive branch.
These conclusions come from our ongoing research project on the preferences and contribution patterns of big donors.
The States
CBS New York: Officials: City Council Candidate Could Receive Public Money For Anti-Semitic Campaign
A crack in the city’s campaign finance law might allow an Upper Manhattan City Council candidate to run an inflammatory campaign with taxpayer dollars…
As part of his campaign, he wants to use taxpayer dollars to help spread anti-Semitism against incumbent City Councilman Mark Levine (D-7th)
About a week ago, Lopez-Pierre sent out a tweet saying he planned to use $100,000 in public matching funds to inform voters that his campaign is about “protecting tenants from greedy Jewish landlords.”
City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito was simply outraged.
“Taxpayer dollars are your dollars; my dollars. I’m not a bigot. I’m not a racist. I’m not an anti-Semite. So to have someone be able to spend my money to put forth that kind of a message is despicable,” Mark-Viverito said…
Officials said the frustration is that if Lopez-Pierre raises at least $5,000 from 75 people in the district, he will get $6 in public matching funds for every dollar he collects. He can spend the money any way he wants.
New York Post: De Blasio heads out of town on campaign fundraising circuit
By Rich Calder
Mayor de Blasio will rack up frequent-flier miles this weekend by holding three out-of-town fund-raisers – including an A-list Beverly Hills affair being thrown by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and legendary TV producer Norman Lear.
De Blasio has already cited small donations from ordinary New Yorkers, which qualify for public matching funds, as a key part of his campaign for re-election this fall.
Now he’s hitting the road to line up big-buck donors a week after meeting with federal prosecutors investigating his past campaign-finance practices.
