In the News
National Public Radio: New Rankings Highlight Corporate Transparency In Politics
Peter Overby
“This is a significant area of concern for corporate America now,” said Robert Kelner, a Washington-based campaign finance lawyer with corporate clients. But he dismissed as “utterly false” one of CPA’s central arguments: that shareholders have an economic interest in a company’s political spending.
At the Center for Competitive Politics, which opposes regulation of political money, founder Brad Smith said, “The CPA is the real threat.” He said the center demands increased disclosure “to be used for these ‘name and shame’ campaigns against companies that engage in political activity.”
Regulations
Slate: The Real Reason for the Chaos in the House
Reihan Salam
There’s another factor, which Rauch also references. Successive waves of campaign finance regulation have been designed to limit the influence of money in politics. What these regulations have actually done is quite different. In Better Parties, Better Government, Joel Gora and Peter Wallison observe that today’s campaign finance regulations limit the extent to which candidates can coordinate their fundraising and campaigning efforts with central party organizations, so candidates have to build their own fundraising networks. Building such a network is fairly easy for those who’ve spent their lives around the very wealthy or who are very wealthy themselves. But it is much harder for less wealthy individuals who have dedicated their lives to public service or who for whatever reason aren’t skilled in the art of wheedling money out of strangers.
What does any of this have to do with the House Freedom Caucus? Because central party organizations can’t freely coordinate with candidates, and because candidates have to raise the bulk of their campaign cash independently, the parties have very little leverage over candidates.
Washington Post: How campaign finance regulation contributes to congressional dysfunction
Jonathan Adler
That’s not all. Current campaign finance regulations also impede the development of relationships among members of Congress, particularly across the aisle, that can serve as the basis for compromise and deal-making. Because current laws limit the size of campaign contributions, legislators must raise the millions of dollars necessary to run a reelection campaign from a larger number of individuals — and this takes time. So when members of Congress have a spare moment, they head to fundraising events or hit the phones. Time that could be spent interacting with other members of Congress — or even boning up on policy substance — are instead spent chasing after money.
Were limits on campaign contributions less stringent (or even nonexistent), members of Congress could raise the amount of money necessary for their campaigns in far less time, leaving far more time for them to actually do their jobs, develop a meaningful understanding of policy issues and develop the relationships upon which successful legislative initiatives are built.
Independent Groups
New York Times: The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election
Nicholas Confessore, Sarah Cohen, and Karen Yourish
These donors’ fortunes reflect the shifting composition of the country’s economic elite. Relatively few work in the traditional ranks of corporate America, or hail from dynasties of inherited wealth. Most built their own businesses, parlaying talent and an appetite for risk into huge wealth: They founded hedge funds in New York, bought up undervalued oil leases in Texas, made blockbusters in Hollywood. More than a dozen of the elite donors were born outside the United States, immigrating from countries like Cuba, the old Soviet Union, Pakistan, India and Israel.
More Soft Money Hard Law: True Independent Speech
Bob Bauer
The donors who pool resources through a PAC are generally not acting differently. They are unified in a judgment that the PAC is seeking the right outcome–the election or defeat of a particular candidate–and they are willing to delegate to others the strategic judgment about the most winning argument. Like the individual spender, they do have a view and they are expressing it—about that candidate—and the only question, about which they are prepared to be flexible, is the best way to make the case. Of course, if the PAC selects messages offensive to them, they will make themselves heard about this, and one response available to them is cutting off further support.
So there are two challenges here for those concerned to distinguish between the first and second orders of speech, between true expression and the “proxy” kind: distinguishing how the individual’s independent speech is necessarily more “personal” or “true” or “expressive” than that of the group’s, and explaining how the law could feasibly capture the nature of the distinction they would like to make.
New York Times: Nonprofit Masks Source of Ads Backing Rubio
Jonathan Martin and Nicholas Confessore
Most such groups — wary of run-ins with the Internal Revenue Service — work carefully to create the appearance that they are not focused on elections or designed to support a specific candidate. They tend to operate across multiple election cycles or run ads supporting or attacking a wide swath of candidates, for example.
Some other major outside groups have also become more cautious, relying more on affiliated super PACs or other groups. Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, a 501(c)(4) founded in 2010, has been among the largest spenders on behalf of Republican Senate and presidential candidates in the past.
But Crossroads has faced difficulty winning I.R.S. recognition, which could make some donors wary.
Influence
Breitbart News: Billionaires Find New Ways to Support Campaigns
Mike Flynn
Billionaire Google Executive Eric Schmidt hasn’t contributed directly to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, but the savvy tech mogul as found a more meaningful way to support her efforts. Schmidt is the angel investor behind The Groundwork, a new data mining firm under contract with the Clinton campaign.
The private firm was formed immediately after the Obama reelection campaign by some of its lead technology staffers with start-up funds from Schmidt. Groundwork is just one of at least three new firms founded by former Obama staffers with funding from Schmidt.
The firms provide campaigns, through regular vendor relationships, with cutting edge technology and, most importantly, expert software engineers who would otherwise not be available to an individual campaign.
Private Giving
Huffington Post: Charles Koch Denies Dark Money Donations
Paul Blumenthal
In the CBS interview, Koch defended donors’ desire to keep their contributions secret.
“[A] lot of our donors don’t want to take the kind of abuse that I do,” Koch said. “They don’t want these attacks, they don’t want the death threats. So they aren’t going to participate if they have to have their names associated with it.”
When Mason asked Koch on CBS if it was fair or healthy in a democracy for a small number of wealthy individuals to dominate political funding, he replied, “Listen, if I didn’t think it was healthy or fair I wouldn’t do it, because what we’re after is to fight against special interests.”
Apparently, Koch doesn’t believe the phrase “special interests” applies to him.
“[M]y interest is — just as it’s been in business — is, what will help people improve their lives?” he continued. “And to get rid of these special interests, that’s the whole thing that drives me.”
FEC
KQED: Federal Election Commission Chair Ann Ravel on Record Campaign Spending and Overcoming Gridlock
Michael Krasny
The 2016 presidential campaign may generate a record $10 billion in spending. At the same time, the Federal Election Commission, the 6-member bipartisan body charged with enforcing the nation’s campaign finance laws, remains, according to FEC Chair Ann Ravel, “worse than dysfunctional.” We speak to Ravel about the FEC’s mandate and how she plans combat campaign finance abuse in the upcoming election.
Gyrocopter
Roll Call: Campaign Finance Reformers Skeptical of Doug Hughes’ Strategy
Hannah Hess
Douglas Hughes’ warning on the corrupting influence of money in politics resonated, but his delivery strategy did not necessarily help the cause.
The Florida mailman headed to federal court on Thursday for a status hearing on the six charges he faces after landing his gyrocopter on the Capitol’s West Lawn, even as key players in the campaign finance debate criticized his flight.
“I think you need to separate the stunt from the issue,” said Trevor Potter.
Citizens United
Bloomberg: Justice Kennedy’s Political Casino
Francis Wilkinson
In his decision, Kennedy pointed out why a previous court ruling, Austin, should be overturned and supplanted even in the face of stare decisis, the principle that precedent guides the court.
“Our precedent is to be respected unless the most convincing of reasons demonstrates that adherence to it puts us on a course that is sure error,” he wrote.
Fair enough. Five years later, in the thick of free-wheeling campaigns for presidential nominations, let’s subject Kennedy’s ruling in Citizens United to the same test. Does it deserve respect? Or has it put the court on a course of “sure error”?
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Post: Everything you need to know about the 2016 money race so far
Matea Gold
The top Democratic presidential contenders are continuing to outpace their Republican counterparts when it comes to raising money directly for their campaigns, according to third-quarter fundraising totals that have been announced so far.
Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton pulled in $28 million, and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont collected $26 million over the summer months, beating out the top raiser to date on the GOP side: retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who scooped up $20.2 million.
New Republic: Lawrence Lessig’s Attack Lines for Tuesday’s Debate—Had He Been Invited
Laura Reston
Lawrence Lessig sounded irritated as he spoke by phone while on a train on Saturday morning. The Harvard professor turned political rabble-rouser, who launched his presidential campaign a month ago, has already raised more than a million dollars and started hiring political operatives. But CNN has not invited him to participate in the Democratic debate on Tuesday night.
“Obviously the only way that someone like me could qualify [would be] if the media were willing to engage about issues more interesting than Hillary Clinton’s emails or the depths of Donald Trump’s brain,” he told me.
The States
Wall Street Journal: California Considers Tough Campaign-Finance Rules
Alejandro Lazo
The state’s Fair Political Practices Commission is scheduled to vote on the proposals Thursday. The rules would apply to statewide and local elections.
The vote comes as outside groups are playing a central role in national campaigns since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. That ruling led to the growth of super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts in support of candidates, or their opponents, but cannot legally coordinate with candidate campaigns.
Critics of the ruling say campaigns are finding ways around the ban by hiring the same consultants, publicizing campaign strategies and having candidates, or presumptive candidates, fundraise on behalf of the super PACs.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Lawmakers to take up bills on campaign finance, election oversight
Patrick Marley
The campaign finance bill would double how much donors can give to candidates. More significantly, it would allow donors to given unlimited sums to political parties and key campaign committees that could then be passed on to candidates.
That would raise the limit to $1,000 to candidates for the Assembly, $2,000 to candidates for the Senate and $20,000 to candidates for governor, Supreme Court justice and other statewide offices.
The limits would be adjusted every five years to account for inflation. Backers say such a provision is needed because limits haven’t been raised for decades.
