In the News
Raleigh News & Observer: NC Democrat isn’t telling the full story about corporate influence in her campaign
By Will Doran
“When a corporation or corporate special interest makes a campaign contribution, they do it because they’re looking for you to support legislation that will help (its) bottom line,” Manning said in the debate. “That’s why I’m not taking any corporate PAC money. I don’t want to be beholden to corporations. I want to go to Washington to fight for the people of our district.”
She reiterated that talking point in her closing statement, saying, “I haven’t taken a dime of corporate PAC money because I want to represent the people.”
Manning is technically correct that she doesn’t take money from corporate PACs. But her claim ignores the fact that – like nearly all politicians – her donor list is full of CEOs, lobbyists, real estate developers and other corporate bigwigs.
She also takes money from other types of non-corporate PACs, some of which are funded by corporate PACs and other business interests.
“She’s got a lot of money from unions,” said Sarah Bryner, the research director for campaign finance watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics. “Lots of PAC money. Just not what most of us would consider corporate PAC money.” …
And then there’s the fact that corporate PACs are not funded from corporate revenues at all. It’s illegal for businesses to give money directly to candidates. Instead, corporate PACs are funded voluntarily by employees of the corporation.
For that reason, Joseph Albanese, a researcher at the pro-PAC group Institute for Free Speech, wrote in Marchthat it’s misleading and unfair for candidates to imply that taking money from corporate PACs is inherently worse than taking money from people who work for that company.
“This is essentially equivalent to saying that donations from anyone who works for a corporation are a corrupting influence on our democracy,” Albanese wrote.
Supreme Court
Christian Science Monitor: How Big Sky Country became the front line in a long battle over dark money
By Christa Case Bryant
Bopp Law is urging the Supreme Court to strike down the state’s laws dealing with two chief pillars of post-Watergate campaign finance: limits on how much individuals can give to political campaigns and rules about disclosing contributions.
Montana has the lowest limits on individual giving in the nation – $180 for candidates running for the state Legislature. Motl, who spearheaded a 1994 ballot initiative that dramatically lowered the individual limits, calls them “the most essential remaining element” of Montana campaign finance law, because they level the playing field for would-be donors…
Bopp Law and its clients sued COPP in Lair v. Mangan, arguing that Montana’s limits violate the First Amendment right to speech…
“The Lair case is particularly interesting … because they’re challenging basically every contribution limit in the country. So it has potential repercussions way beyond Montana,” says Dale Schowengerdt, solicitor general in the attorney general’s office.
The second case deals with whether citizens have a right to know who’s behind the glossy fliers that show up in their mailboxes just before elections…
Milanovich argues that the Disclose Act has a chilling effect on citizens or groups who want to make their voice heard in elections. That, like Lair, is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment, she and Bopp argue in Montanans for Community Development v. Mangan.
The Courts
Memphis Commercial Appeal: Federal judge rules Memphis police violated consent decree after spying on protesters
By Phillip Jackson
A federal judge ruled Friday that the Memphis Police Department violated a consent decree between the ACLU of Tennessee and City of Memphis by spying on protesters through the department’s political spying program.
U.S. District Judge Jon McCalla ruled on the Blanchard v. City of Memphis case that the department violated a consent decree from 1978 between the city and the ACLU of Tennessee by spying on political protesters and conducting investigations…
“This important decision ensures that activists in Memphis can continue to fight the good fight without fear of unwarranted police surveillance,” ACLU of Tennessee Executive Director Hedy Weinberg said in a statement.
“The right to free speech is crucial to our ability to speak out against injustice and to hold the government accountable,” Weinberg said. “Especially in this day and age, being able to truly engage in dialogue about important issues without the threat of intimidation is vital to our democracy.” …
Evidence from the case showed Memphis police conducted extensive surveillance, including creating fake Facebook profiles to befriend protesters on social media and gain access to private messages.
Evidence presented also showed Memphis police sent plainclothes officers to monitor protests, church services, a tree-planting ceremony in memory of a teen killed by Memphis police and a black-owned food truck festival, the ACLU of Tennessee said…
“This ruling is a tremendous victory for free speech in Memphis and nationwide,” said Thomas H. Castelli, the ACLU of Tennessee legal director, in a statement.
Just Security: Immigrants’ First Amendment Rights at Stake as the Second Circuit Hears Ragbir Case
By Ramya Krishnan
Are federal immigration officers free to retaliate against immigrant activists who exercise their First Amendment rights? That is the question the Second Circuit will confront on Monday, when it hears arguments in Ragbir v. Homan.
The case involves the highly public surveillance, arrest, transfer and attempted deportation of immigrant rights activist Ravi Ragbir by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Ragbir, the executive director of the New Sanctuary Coalition, is an outspoken critic of ICE. For years, he has helped bring elected officials and clergy into ICE federal buildings to bear witness to the human costs of deportation. Last year, however, ICE began closing their public spaces to New Sanctuary Coalition volunteers, and, in January of this year, it conducted an apparently coordinated operation to surveil, arrest and deport two coalition leaders. ICE agents successfully deported New Sanctuary Coalition co-founder Jean Montrevil to Haiti that same month. In Ragbir’s case, a federal court intervened, issuing a temporary stay and ordering his release. But ICE continues to pursue his deportation.
Ragbir and Montrevil are not alone. Across the country, there have been more than 20 reported cases of immigrant rights activists being targeted by ICE after speaking out. Many people in the community have come to one conclusion: ICE is attempting to silence its critics.
Citizens United
Minneapolis Star Tribune: Money in politics isn’t the problem. Politicians are.
By D.J. Tice
The worst part is that many of them, with good intentions, think we’re naive enough to believe, as they apparently do, that the root of the problem is that politicians just don’t have enough power.
That’s the impression one gets from the chorus of calls for sweeping new controls on money in politics…
It’s painfully hard to defend anything about our nasty and moronic campaign practices today. But it hardly sounds like a cure to give the very institutions and factions that have produced this ugly mess vastly more authority to control and restrict political life.
That is what “getting money out of politics” and “overturning Citizens United” would mean…
[S]everal versions of a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United have been drafted in recent years. It’s worth considering what we’re being urged to add to the U.S. Constitution.
The Democracy for All amendment, a version introduced in the House and Senate in 2017 with 180 cosponsors (including Minnesota Democrats in both chambers), majestically provides that “Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.”
It adds that lawmakers may prohibit election spending by “artificial entities” like corporations (a key concern of many Citizens United critics).
And then the amendment adds: “Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress or the States the power to abridge the freedom of the press.”…
Apparently, except where freedom is specifically reserved (to whoever ends up defined as “the press”) the right to make oneself heard about elections would henceforth become a privilege government could “limit” as it saw fit.
Candidates and Campaigns
The Conversation: Money in elections doesn’t mean what you think it does
By Suzanne Robbins
Money is indispensable in American electoral campaigns. Without it, candidates cannot amplify their message to reach voters and it’s harder to motivate people to take interest and vote…
Money is necessary for a candidate to be competitive, but it doesn’t ensure success.
A lack of money can eliminate less capable candidates, but having money does not guarantee that a particular candidate’s message will resonate with the voters. As Campaign Finance Institute researchers Michael Malbin and Brendan Glavin write, “If voters do not like what they are hearing, telling them more of the same will not change their opinion.” …
[M]oney does not guarantee a victory. Simply looking at the average amount spent by winners and losers obscures the fact that many races have no real competition.
In 2016, winning incumbents far outspent their challengers, but the winners in open seat contests spent nearly the same amount as their opponents, while those incumbents who lost outspent their winning opponents half of the time…
All that extra spending translates into additional advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts.
In the end, what does that mean?
It means more information about the candidates and issues for voters, increased interest in the campaign and increased voter turnout.
That’s good for democracy.
Focusing on the putative evils of money diminishes the importance of other things that may help or hinder a candidate…
In the world of politics and campaigns, money is meaningful. It just may not mean what, and as much as, most people think it means.
The States
HuffPost: Fighting Corruption Is On The Ballot In 3 States And 2 Cities This November
By Paul Blumenthal
[South Dakota’s] Nov. 6 ballot features a constitutional amendment, Amendment W., that would enact stringent ethics and lobbying rules. The amendment includes many of the same provisions as the repealed 2016 initiative: lowering contribution limits, imposing ethics rules and limiting lobbyist power – but not the public financing system…
An informal “coffee and cookies” get together of 12 North Dakotans led to the writing of a constitutional amendment that would: ban lobbyist gifts and foreign money; require all campaign spending be disclosed; create a nonpartisan ethics board; strengthen conflict of interest rules; establish a two-year cooling-off period before lawmakers can become lobbyists; and prevent candidates from using campaign money for personal uses…
In Missouri, voters will cast a ballot on a wide-ranging constitutional amendment that would put limits on lobbying, lower campaign contribution limits, expand freedom of information laws to the legislature, and create a nonpartisan redistricting process for the state…
If approved, a ballot initiative in Baltimore, Maryland, would give the city council the power to update the city’s public campaign financing system, establishing a fund to match public dollars to candidates raising small-donor contributions…
In Denver, Colorado, activists have put the Democracy for the People Initiative on the ballot. This proposal would require the disclosure of dark money spent on city elections, prohibit corporate donations to candidates, lower contribution limits and create a small-donor public matching system for campaigns.
Albuquerque voters will have to wait until February to vote on an initiative creating a new public financing system based on Seattle’s program, which provides voters with small-dollar vouchers to give to candidates of their choice.
Grand Forks Herald: Will North Dakota’s Measure 1 stifle or enhance political discourse? Opponents, supporters disagree
By Tu-Uyen Tran
“The disclosure requirements that they’re trying to impose on North Dakotans are just ridiculous,” Geoff Simon, a lobbyist who heads up the opposition group North Dakotans for Sound Government, said recently…
The part of Measure 1 pounced on by opponents – ranging from business interests to the North Dakota Catholic Conference to the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota – is in Section 1 Subsection 2.
It requires the state Legislature to pass laws mandating “public disclosure of the ultimate and true source of funds spent in any medium, in an amount greater than two hundred dollars, adjusted for inflation, to influence any statewide election, election for the legislative assembly, statewide ballot-issue election, or to lobby or otherwise influence state government action.”
The ACLU complained about the lack of explicit exception for news media reporting on politics and individuals visiting with their lawmakers.
The church and the Greater North Dakota Chamber complained that the “ultimate and true source” clause would force them to trace any spending to influence politics all the way back to individual members and even customers of business members…
[T]he ACLU has argued Measure 1 would make political advocacy so cumbersome as to impair free speech rights enshrined in the First Amendment.
