In the News
NorthJersey.com: NJ lawmakers look to close ‘dark money’ disclosure loopholes as top Democrats face flak
By Nicholas Pugliese
The Senate budget committee voted unanimously to approve significant changes to the state’s financial disclosure laws despite a threat by the ACLU of New Jersey to challenge the effort in court over privacy concerns…
The bill approved Thursday in the Senate budget committee, S-1500, is backed by Sweeney and would require any group that raises or spends more than $3,000 to influence or provide information about an election, a ballot question, legislation or a regulation to file new financial reports with the state…
The original version of the bill would have required the disclosure of all donors who give more than $300, but it was revised Thursday to increase that threshold to $10,000…
Amol Sinha, the executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey, which has a 501(c)(4) arm, said enacting such a law would infringe on protected First Amendment activity and could put donors in harm’s way.
“We don’t want to see a world where that’s the case or where our donors are targeted because of their ideologies,” he said.
Bradley Smith, a conservative law professor and former Federal Election Commission chairman who now leads the Institute for Free Speech, expanded on that theme in arguing that privacy in some cases is integral to freedom of association. He referred to two recent acts of violence – a man who drove a car into a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Jersey, and a man who shot a Republican congressman during practice for a charity baseball game outside of Washington, D.C. – to illustrate how affiliation with certain viewpoints can attract unwanted attention.
“How comfortable are we, how comfortable are New Jerseyites, with having Donald Trump, for example, know the names of all the small donors to organizations that may be involved in legislation?” Smith said.
Other provisions in the legislation would marginally increase contribution limits for donations to political parties and candidates.
The Courts
ACLU: The FBI ‘Can Neither Confirm nor Deny’ That It Monitors Your Social Media Posts
By Hugh Handeyside and Matt Cagle
In recent years, the federal government has significantly ramped up its efforts to monitor people on social media. The FBI, for one, has repeatedly acknowledged that it engages in surveillance of social media posts. So it was surprising when the bureau responded to our Freedom of Information Act request on this kind of surveillance by saying that it “can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records.”
The six other federal agencies we submitted the FOIA request to haven’t produced a single document. The request, filed last May, seeks information on how the agencies collect and analyze posts from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.
Today we sued the agencies to get some answers, because the public has a right to know about the exact nature of social media surveillance – especially whether agencies are monitoring and retaining social media posts, or using surveillance products that label activists and people of color as threats to public safety based on their First Amendment-protected activities…
Social media surveillance raises a number of red flags. First, it discourages people from speaking freely – a phenomenon that research and studies bear out…
Aside from chilling expression, government monitoring of social media raises the risk that innocent people will be wrongly investigated or put on government watchlists based on that speech.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Judge finds Republicans violated free speech rights by blocking liberal group on Twitter
By Patrick Marley
A federal judge ruled Friday that three Wisconsin Republicans violated the First Amendment rights of a liberal group by blocking it on Twitter.
U.S. District Judge William Conley found in a 30-page ruling that Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester and two others had acted unconstitutionally by blocking One Wisconsin Now on Twitter “because of its prior speech or identity.”
One Wisconsin Now – an advocacy group that frequently tweaks Republicans online – in 2017 sued Vos, Rep. John Nygren of Marinette and then-Rep. Jesse Kremer of Kewauskum for blocking it on Twitter…
“Having opted to create a Twitter account … and benefit from its broad, public reach, defendants cannot now divorce themselves from its First Amendment implications and responsibilities as state actors,” [Conley] wrote…
Conley wrote that a likely way to resolve the case would be to have the officials unblock the group, but he won’t decide whether to order that until more briefs are filed.
Congress
Washington Post: Mitch McConnell: Behold the Democrat Politician Protection Act
By Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
Since Watergate, the [Federal Elections Commission] has been a six-member body so neither party can use it to punish political opponents. Apparently, Democrats have grown tired of playing fair. This bill would weaponize the FEC with a 3-to-2 partisan makeup.
It would also empower that newly partisan FEC to track and catalogue more of what you say. It would broaden the type of speech the commission can define as “campaign-related” and thus regulate. Many more Americans would have to notify the feds when spending even small amounts of money on speech or else be penalized. That partisan FEC would also get wide latitude to determine when a nonprofit’s speech has crossed that fuzzy “campaign-related” line and then forcibly publicize the group’s private supporters.
Apparently the Democrats define “democracy” as giving Washington a clearer view of whom to intimidate and leaving citizens more vulnerable to public harassment over private views. Under this bill, you’d keep your right to free association as long as your private associations were broadcast to everyone. You’d keep your right to speak freely so long as you notified a distant bureaucracy likely run by the same people you criticized. The bill goes so far as to suggest that the Constitution needs an amendment to override First Amendment protections.
Democrats aren’t only coming after free speech. They’re also taking aim at your wallet. Pelosi and company are pitching new taxpayer subsidies, including a 600 percent government match for certain political donations and a new voucher program that would funnel even more public dollars to campaigns…
I’m as firm a supporter as anyone of vigorous debate and a vibrant political discourse – but I don’t think Americans see an urgent need for their tax dollars to be used to bankroll robocalls and attack ads, including for candidates they dislike.
Candidates and Campaigns
The Atlantic: Democratic Operatives Are Building Beto O’Rourke’s Campaign Without Him
By Edward-Isaac Dovere
Out of a shared office space in Brooklyn and through a network of phone calls and emails, political operatives behind a group called Draft Beto have raised $20,000 from 450 donors and parked the money in an account waiting for the former congressman and Senate candidate from Texas to announce a presidential campaign, probably on Facebook Live, his preferred outlet. The email list is already up to 6,000. House parties have been going on for the past few weeks.
For someone who would get into a presidential race without much buildup or preparation, that could be an important head start.
“What we’re doing,” said Boyd Brown, a former South Carolina state legislator and active Democrat who’s now working with the group, “is essentially building a campaign to hand over to him in the event he runs.” …
To fit with O’Rourke’s no-pac-money rule from the Senate campaign, the group worked with a campaign-finance lawyer to establish an account that holds the money they’ve raised. Those funds would be transferred to him within 10 days of his announcing as a candidate.
Draft Beto’s organizers don’t have access to any of the money themselves for operating costs or salaries, wary that people might otherwise accuse them of trying to make money off his name. Nor do they have talking points from him or his staff. But they have coalesced around his most important public statements and provide them to anyone who reaches out and asks about hosting house parties to drum up support. They also provide tips on how to get coverage in the local press and how attendees should be sure to take pictures to help fan the flames on social media.
Independent Groups
Center for Responsive Politics: Politically-active ‘dark money’ groups among sponsors funding 2019 Women’s March
By Raymond Arke
One of the three top sponsors of the 2019 March is the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the “dark money” political nonprofit arm of Planned Parenthood. The fund does not disclose its donors and spent more than $1.4 million to aid Democratic candidates – with the exception of spending to oppose anti-abortion Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) in his primary – in the 2018 cycle. The group’s largest expenditure was almost $577,000 on the unsuccessful special election campaign of Jon Ossoff.
Dark money connections pop up again with several of the organizations listed as partners of the Women’s March. New American Leaders, described as “a movement for inclusive democracy by preparing first and second generation Americans to use their power and potential in elected office’ on its website, is affiliated with the 501c New American Leaders Action Fund. The outside spending group spent $124,998 to support six Democratic House candidates in 2018.
The Center for Popular Democracy Action, another non disclosing group listed as a Women’s March partner, spent $326,091 in the 2018 midterms. The group spent the largest amount of their 2018 cash, $209,626, in support of former Sen. Bill Nelson’ s (D-Fla.) failed re-election. Another nonprofit affiliated with the group, Living United for Change in Arizona, spent $101,819 in support of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).
Additionally, 350.org, an organization focused on building a “grassroots climate movement,” is one of the March partners. Affiliated with the organization is the 350.org Action Fund which keeps its donors a secret. The fund spent more than $98,000 to oppose President Donald Trump in the 2016 cycle. Since then there has been no additional data reported.
The States
Colorado Politics: Secretary of State Griswold sets priorities on campaign finance, voting ease
By Marianne Goodland
“We must bring transparency to the millions and millions of dollars used to influence our elections,” she said. “Now is our time to act to increase disclosure requirements of secret political spending. Now is our time to act to close coordination loopholes. And we must act now to enforce our campaign finance laws.” …
“Corporations and special interests should follow the same set of disclosure rules that candidates already do,” she told the committee. “In Colorado, we do a better job of tracking a $50 contribution to a candidate than we do tracking a $50,000 contribution to an independent expenditure committee, which is the Colorado version of a super PAC.”
And at a time when “foreign actors may be funneling money through nonprofits that then engage in political activity, we must do more to protect the integrity of our elections,” she added.
Griswold proposed requiring disclosure of secret political spending, expanding the “paid for by” disclosure requirements on political advertisements, and exercising the secretary of state’s audit and enforcement power to act on campaign finance, ballot access, and lobbyist violations.
Griswold also suggested that potential candidates should be blocked from “raising millions of dollars in unchecked and uncapped contributions into ‘independent’ committees designed to support them when they officially declare their candidacy,” a direct slap at former Republican gubernatorial candidate Walker Stapleton…
Griswold said she would ensure that independent expenditure and other committees are held accountable for campaign finance violations, and hinted she would use audits and other investigative tools.
Casper Star-Tribune: Campaign finance bill tackles numerous issues but not dark money
By Nick Reynolds
The Wyoming Senate will be taking up a bill attempting to quell the rise of “dark money” in Wyoming’s politics.
However, the proposed legislation – while ensuring more accountability in filing campaign finance reports and greater transparency regarding whom a campaign group is helping or hurting – does not address the crux of the dark money problem, an official with the Secretary of State’s Office said: Wyoming’s leniency around the anonymous incorporation of LLCs…
Speaking Thursday to the Senate Committee on Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions, Kai Schon, Election Director for the Secretary of State’s office, spoke favorably of numerous reforms that would be addressed under Senate File 18.
The legislation would reform the state’s language around electioneering communications, end the practice of groups masquerading as others and require the reporting of expenditures made not just by individuals but outside advocacy groups as well. Additionally, Schon said, the bill clears up constitutional issues regarding campaign finance restrictions for independent candidates and streamlines the process of campaign finance reporting for political action committees, so it is easier for those committees and the public to know when and what they’re reporting.
The bill also creates guidance around outlining more specifically who paid for a political advertisement and gives the Secretary of State the flexibility to respond to new and emerging forms of campaign finance…
To help simplify campaign finance reporting, the bill also sets minimum dollar amounts as thresholds for candidates to itemize their contributions.
Helena Independent Record: Bill would again attempt to regulate accuracy of election materials
By Michael Woodel
House Bill 139, introduced by Rep. Kimberly Dudik, a Democrat from Missoula, would require printed election material referencing another candidate’s voting record to provide specific bill numbers, the year of the vote and titles of bills or resolutions. References to another candidate’s statements would require the date and location the statement was made.
“This doesn’t allow lies anymore to be made or mischaracterizations,” Dudik said. “There’s been many of us in the Legislature who have been attacked by those either in a general or primary.” She also claimed the bill would “do away” with the ability of dark money to sway Montana’s elections. Dudik said the bill would also apply to online election materials…
James Brown, a Helena attorney who has represented American Tradition Partnership in cases challenging Montana’s campaign finance laws, spoke in opposition to the bill Thursday. He said the bill, if passed, would be challenged like previous laws.
“I would advise you that campaign finance laws are the exception to the First Amendment, the First Amendment is not the exception to campaign finance laws, and that’s how this bill reads,” said Brown. He told the committee he worked in litigation of the 2012 case of Lair v. Murry, in which part of the language Dudik’s bill seeks to replace was ruled “unconstitutionally vague” in U.S. District Court.
Seattle Times: Fix loophole in state’s campaign-finance law
By Editorial Board
Theoretically, state law requires political committees to list their top five donors directly on the campaign ads they buy. But a legal workaround is often exploited by groups across the political spectrum, allowing vaguely named political-action committees to appear as the sole donors instead.
This practice of routing money through multiple political-action committees effectively obscures the true donors behind political advertising. That, in turn, can encourage a culture of sleazy attack ads, since the people paying for them can easily hide behind an innocent-sounding shell PAC.
This is something the Legislature should fix. Lawmakers must pass a bill this session that would drill down to the bottom layer of political committees, requiring the true top contributors to be listed on mailers and TV spots.
Senate Bill 5221, sponsored by Sen. Guy Palumbo, D-Maltby, would accomplish that. The measure, which has a hearing Friday before the Senate State Government, Tribal Relations & Elections Committee, would require ads to list the top five individuals and entities who contributed money – not just the top five contributing PACs.
This would require looking at who gave the most money, in aggregate, to all of the main political committees involved in paying for an ad.
State Rep. Mike Pellicciotti, D-Federal Way, plans to introduce a similar proposal in the state House.
This is a sensible reform that would help citizens readily know which individuals, corporations, unions or other groups are trying to influence them.
