In the News
Marketplace: Sheila Krumholz reveals the secrets behind money in politics
By Kimberly Adams
Since the Citizens United decision, there have been more cases and regulatory rollbacks that make it harder for the average person to figure out who’s funding candidates, parties and issue groups.
This has created a more prominent role for groups like [Center for Responsive Politics]…
CRP’s critics argue that while simplifying campaign finance data can be helpful, at times, some of the organization’s breakdowns can be too broad.
Brad Smith, a former FEC chair who runs the Institute for Free Speech, which works to ease some campaign finance restrictions, said at times “this effort to find the route to the donor becomes more misleading to the public that it does become informative.”
CRP over-emphasizes certain types of political money since the Citizens United decision opened the floodgates, Smith argues.
“For example, things like dark money,” Smith said, “if you read sort of how the information is presented, you would think we were just become had become awash with this kind of spending.”
That kind of money, where donors can stay secret , is just a small part of campaign funding. But Smith is right – it does get a lot of attention.
Ricochet: The Administration of Federal Campaign Finance Laws
By Adam J. White
On October 4, 2019, the Gray Center co-hosted “The Administration of Democracy-The George Mason Law Review’s Second Annual Symposium on Administrative Law.” For the second annual symposium, scholars wrote papers
on such fundamental questions as: Is nonpartisan campaign-finance regulation possible?…
The first panel focused on the administration of federal campaign finance laws. We discussed two new papers: Capital University Law School Professor Bradley Smith’s paper, “Feckless: A Critique of Criticism of the Federal Election Commission Structure, and Possible Lessons for the Administration of Campaign Finance and Election Law,” and George Washington University Law Professor Richard Pierce’s paper, “A Realistic Version of Campaign Finance Reform and Two Essential Steps Toward a Return to Effective Governance.”… The video is available at http://administrativestate.gmu.edu/events/the-administration-of-democracy-the-george-mason-law-reviews-second-annual-symposium-on-administrative-law/.
Featuring Bradley A. Smith, Richard J. Pierce, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Trevor Potter, Conor Woodfin, and Adam White.
New from the Institute for Free Speech
Analysis: Citizens United Led to More Speech, Better Democracy
The Institute for Free Speech released an analysis today of the effects of the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The analysis highlights seven key outcomes of the ruling over the decade since it was handed down…
“The Supreme Court got it right ten years ago. Citizens United led to more speech about elections, allowing Americans to educate and motivate their fellow citizens. The result has been more diversity and more change in government,” said Institute for Free Speech President David Keating…
The findings include:
- Since Citizens United, Politics Is More Diverse and Political Change Is Rapid…
- Incumbents and Challengers Have Both Benefited From Super PAC Support – but the Support Helps Challengers More…
- For-Profit Corporations Are Not Big Spenders in Campaigns…
- Money Still Can’t “Buy” an Election. Candidates cannot win on Election Day simply by blanketing the airwaves with advertising…
- Most Campaign Spending Still Comes From Limited Contributions by Individuals to Candidates…
- The Government Cannot Ban Political Books or Movies…
- There is More Speech About Candidates Now Than Ever Before.
Citizens United After 10 Years: More Speech, Better Democracy
By Scott Blackburn
On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibited corporations and labor unions from independently voicing their support or opposition to federal candidates. That law, the Court said, violated those organizations’ First Amendment rights. In the succeeding ten years, the Court’s decision in Citizens United has engendered more discussion and disagreement among policymakers than perhaps any other case in recent history. With ten years and five election cycles of hindsight, this report examines what we can learn from the effects of Citizens United on American campaigns.
The Courts
Wiley Newsletter: Washington Post Wins Legal Challenge Against Maryland’s Political Disclosure Law
By Lee Goodman
Privacy in Focus previously reported on the Washington Post Company’s constitutional challenge to a Maryland statute requiring media companies to collect and publish information identifying the sponsors of political advertising on their online platforms. The Washington Post Company and other media companies asserted that the Maryland law violated the First Amendment…
Preliminary Injunction Affirmed
On December 6, 2019, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling on the basis that Maryland’s imposition of campaign finance disclosure burdens…
Conscripting the Press
The court was particularly concerned with the conscription of press entities to serve as investigative arms of the government…
Anonymous Political Speech Protected
The Fourth Circuit also concluded that “the fact that the Act compels third parties to disclose certain identifying information regarding political speakers implicates protections for anonymous speech.”…
Standard of Review
In reaching its conclusion, the Fourth Circuit acknowledged…
Implications for Legislation
The Fourth Circuit’s opinion has particular relevance to Congress’ consideration of the Honest Ads Act which has been pending in Congress for several years…
Online Speech Platforms
Columbia Journalism Review: Who is right about political ads, Twitter or Facebook?
By Mathew Ingram
Twitter has chosen to ban political advertising, but questions remain about how it plans to define that term, and whether banning ads will do more harm than good. Meanwhile, Facebook has gone in the opposite direction, saying it will not even fact-check political ads. So whose strategy is the best, Twitter’s or Facebook’s?…
Tatenda Musapatike, director of campaigns for a media-strategy firm called Acronym, said that her organization supports Facebook’s decision not to ban political ads on the platform, because she says such a ban “would put progressive organizations at a disadvantage” in terms of raising awareness…
Ellen Weintraub, a member and three-time chairperson of the Federal Election Commission, said “the American people are entitled to have access to a variety of perspectives on the important issues of the day. But they are also entitled not to have their personal data used to manipulate them.” Weintraub said she thinks Twitter went too far in banning political ads altogether, “but Facebook has gone too far in the other direction by having a hands off attitude.” As for the company’s argument that it is merely doing what TV networks do with political advertising, Weintraub said: “My television does not collect the kind of information about my likes, dislikes, and preferences that Facebook does.”
Vice: Anti-Citizenship Law Protests Are Turning India’s Youth Political on ‘Apolitical’ TikTok
By Pallavi Pundir
Globally, TikTok had assumed the identity of being “apolitical” in the most political times, but the very youth that are reshaping movements and democracies are heavily utilising this platform to voice their opinions. Over the last few months, users in countries like the US or Hong Kong reported facing “soft-censorship” and censorship of their political content and hashtags. Most recently, an Afghan-American teenager’s clever post depicting her applying make-up and talking about the condition of Uighurs in China, broke the somewhat entertainment-based reputation of TikTok…
Ateeq Baig, a 17-year-old engineering student from Hyderabad and a TikToker with 23K followers, says that being political on TikTok is a very recent sentiment. “I honestly wasn’t interested in politics or raising my voice like this before. Now that I see that people are into it and want to see it more, I make content around it too,” Baig tells VICE. Baig has TikTok videos of himself lip syncing to Bollywood song “Jingostan Beatbox” from Gully Boy, while holding a signage saying “#WeRejectCAB&NRC”, and an elaborate caption saying, “WE ALL ARE TOGETHER FOREVER. No one can divide us! And we are Indians #rejectsCAA #rejectNRC.”
Candidates and Campaigns
Intercept: A Campaign Finance Rule Makes Life Much Harder for Working-Class Challengers
By Rachel M. Cohen
The odds are long for any candidate seeking to take on an entrenched incumbent, but the path to being financially competitive in a primary is particularly tough for those who dare run without an already built-in network of wealthy family, friends, and co-workers. Though some new companies and organizations have entered the fray over the last few years to help working-class candidates more effectively compete – including a new political action committee launched this month by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – the path to victory can be even harder for those candidates who can’t afford to dedicate all of their time to campaigning.
Under federal campaign guidelines, candidates running in a general election are permitted to use some of their campaign contributions to pay themselves salaries. The rule, approved in 2002 by the Federal Election Commission, was intended specifically to make it easier for people who don’t come from vast wealth to quit their jobs and campaign.
“Candidates of modest means too often have been crowded out of running for office,” said Michael Toner, a Republican FEC commissioner who sponsored the measure. He argued the new rule “could help people like blue-collar workers, school teachers, and others who don’t make six-figure salaries to run for office.”
As the New York Times reported at the time, the idea of letting candidates pay themselves a salary was actually originally put forth by Republicans, who resented Democrats’ 40-year grip on the House of Representatives. The GOP saw a salary as a way to enable people to challenge incumbents, who were largely Democrats.
Wall Street Journal: The Bloomberg Effect: Huge Spending Transforms 2020 Campaign Dynamics
By Tarini Parti and Lukas I. Alpert
The flow of cash-dubbed the Bloomberg effect by media-measurement firm Advertising Analytics LLC-has upended the financial dynamics of the election. Television ad rates jumped 45% in Houston after the Bloomberg campaign bought $1 million worth of ads in November, Advertising Analytics said. The campaign paid as much as double the going rate for staff and promised jobs to workers through November, whether or not Mr. Bloomberg stays in the race…
“Everything about what Bloomberg is doing is unprecedented,” said Rufus Gifford, former finance director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Mr. Bloomberg remains a long shot, Mr. Gifford said…
Kevin Sheekey, Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign manager, said there’s more to Mr. Bloomberg’s candidacy than his spending, pointing to wealthy but politically inexperienced candidates such as Meg Whitman or Ross Perot who failed in the past. “Money won’t just determine elections,” he said. “You have to have a record and a message.”
Lots of rich people have run for office, lots of candidates have claimed excellent business credentials and many have claimed to have top-flight data operations, which Mr. Bloomberg emphasizes…
Mr. Bloomberg hasn’t ruled out spending $1 billion before November if needed.
“Certainly it’s going to be disruptive,” said Robert Wolf, former chairman and CEO of UBS Americas and a longtime Democratic donor. “We just don’t know how yet.”
News & Observer: Senate candidate took money from corporate interests. Now she says she’s ‘unbought’
By Brian Murphy
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Erica Smith has vowed not to take money from corporate political action committees during her campaign, often railing against what she calls the corrupting influence of money in politics.
“I’m unbought and unbossed. I’m the person that you need representing you. I don’t take corporate money. I have taken the pledge,” she said during a September forum.
Smith told The News & Observer that she swore off corporate PAC money before her 2018 state Senate race. On Twitter, she wrote that “bought leadership is never paid for.” She told an Elizabeth Warren supporter worried about Smith “taking big donor fundraisers” the same thing during a Twitter exchange in September. Smith’s Twitter bio says “People, not PACs.”
But in the time between her 2016 election and her entering the U.S. Senate race in late January 2019, Smith accepted money from a variety of committees connected to corporate entities…
In a December interview, Smith acknowledged some of the money.
“There was a Duke Energy PAC check that I received for $3,000, but that was tied to my leadership as the chair of the NC Legislative Black Caucus,” Smith said. “Even that big corporate PAC check donation, it didn’t cause me or influence me to vote. I voted for the people of North Carolina and put the issues over industry.”
The States
Politico: The Self-Funding Gamble (Illinois Playbook)
By Shia Kapos and Adrienne Hurst
Self-funders have a critical advantage in any race. They don’t have to work a day job and then “bust their butts” at night trying to fundraise, Ken Snyder, principal and co-founder of SnyderPickerill Media Group told Playbook, whose firm has managed campaigns across the country. “Lots of mistakes or gaffes a candidate makes can be attributed to fatigue.”
Of course, self-funding doesn’t guarantee victory, either. Just ask Jim Oberweis, the state senator now running for a congressional seat. In the 2006 GOP gubernatorial primary, he spent nearly $3.3 million of his own money only to lose to Judy Baar Topinka (who lost to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich). Self-funders are known to make rookie campaign mistakes in spending.
“It comes down to the kind of campaign you’re going to run and where that individual is on the issues compared to the voting base,” says P2 Consulting CEO Hanah Jubeh, who has managed dozens Illinois campaigns over the years.
Judicial races tend to see more self-funders than most campaigns. That’s because they aren’t allowed to personally solicit donations – though friends can on their behalf. And many see self-funding as an investment of sorts.
