In the News
Washington Examiner: Bipartisanship works for the FEC
By Luke WachobOn Oct. 9, the FEC approved new rules instituting landmark Supreme Court decisions in Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC. In guiding the FEC to this moment, Chairman Lee Goodman and Vice Chair Ann Ravel showed substantial leadership and demonstrated how the commission is supposed to act.The product of post-Watergate reforms, the FEC is made up of six commissioners, with no more than three from any one political party. The purposefully bipartisan structure of the FEC ensures that it cannot be abused by one party or the President to hamper political opponents, a major concern after Richard Nixon’s presidency.However, as we all know, getting the two parties to agree is not always a simple task. Every time the commission reaches a 3-3 tie vote, you can count on disappointed parties to scream bloody murder and rail against gridlock in response. The New York Times even recently advised giving the president the power to appoint a deciding vote when 3-3 ties occur, which would essentially make the FEC an arm of the President’s party.
Independent Groups
Slate: Inside the PAC teaching corporate America how to make its employees vote for the right candidates and causes.
By Spencer WoodmanBased in Washington, D.C., BIPAC donates directly to political candidates just like other traditional political action committees; this year, it has contributed to a variety of campaigns, including Republican Senate contenders Cory Gardner of Colorado, Terri Lynn Land of Michigan, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Eighty-nine percent of BIPAC’s contributions in House and Senate elections this year have gone to Republicans, and not a single dollar or endorsement has gone to a Democrat in a U.S. Senate race. But its primary aim isn’t to help individual candidates win office; rather BIPAC’s goal is to turn as many private employers as possible into “employee political education” machines for business interests. BIPAC urges major companies to transform their workforces into a voting bloc and provides sophisticated tools that show employers how to do it. Although BIPAC claims nonpartisanship, in the races that matter most—such as this year’s hotly contested battles that will determine control of the Senate—BIPAC has the GOP’s back.Companies do not generally advertise their affiliation with BIPAC. The websites that BIPAC builds and hosts for businesses often contain no indication—other than the BIPAC URL—that the information is coming from a third party. ConocoPhillips’ employee engagement website is typical, in that it appears to be wholly created by the company itself. The website even bears a ConocoPhillips copyright. But once employees click the “election information” button, they arrive at BIPAC’s ranking of elected officials. For those in Alaska, that means seeing a BIPAC performance rating of 86 percent for Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, but only a 26 percent rating for the state’s Democratic Sen. Mark Begich, who is fighting a tight race this fall to hold onto his seat.
NY Times: How Billionaire Oligarchs Are Becoming Their Own Political Parties
By Jim RutenbergIn August, Tom Steyer and seven campaign advisers sat in a small conference room in Coral Gables, Fla., trying to figure out how to save the world. Steyer, who is 57, has a fortune of roughly $1.5 billion, and his advisers were among the most talented political operatives in the United States. Steyer is especially concerned about climate change, and his immediate goal, the object of discussion that day, was to replace the sitting governor of Florida, Rick Scott, a Republican who has questioned the very existence of anthropogenic climate change, with Charlie Crist, the previous governor, whose environmental views hew more closely to Steyer’s.
Disclosure
Washington Post: Parties release new megadonor lists
By TW FarnamThe $150,000 donation that Cambridge, Mass., investor Ian Simmons gave to the Democratic group Grassroots Victory Project 2014 is the largest single donation made to a candidate or party since the 2002 campaign finance reforms, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.The money went to an amalgam of 26 different Democratic political organizations, including state and even county party committees, each of whom get a small slice of the donations. In all, 11 people each gave more than $100,000 to the group, which raised a total of $1.3 million during the three month period ending Sept. 30, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission.The Republicans’ Targeted State Victory Committee raised $2.3 million during the same period, including three donations of $130,000 or more. U.S. lawmakers and party officials can directly solicit these larger contributions, which are typically spent to help candidates in the closest races.
Government, Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
Washington Post: The government wants to study ‘social pollution’ on Twitter
By Ajit PaiMy guess is that most Americans would answer those questions with a resounding no. But the federal government seems to disagree. The National Science Foundation , a federal agency whose mission is to “promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and to secure the national defense,” is funding a project to collect and analyze your Twitter data.The project is being developed by researchers at Indiana University, and its purported aim is to detect what they deem “social pollution” and to study what they call “social epidemics,” including how memes — ideas that spread throughout pop culture — propagate. What types of social pollution are they targeting? “Political smears,” so-called “astroturfing” and other forms of “misinformation.”Named “Truthy,” after a term coined by TV host Stephen Colbert, the project claims to use a “sophisticated combination of text and data mining, social network analysis, and complex network models” to distinguish between memes that arise in an “organic manner” and those that are manipulated into being.
State and Local
Connecticut –– CT Mirror: GOP sues, claims Democrats illegally supported Malloy
By Mark PazniokasBy using money from its federal account, which can support state campaigns in limited circumstances, the Democrats are skirting a ban on contributions from state contractors to state campaigns, Republicans said.“They want to use prohibited state-contractor money to help get Dan Malloy elected,” said Jerry Labriola Jr., the GOP state chairman. “We had no other choice but to resort to this lawsuit today.”Labriola said the party is asking a judge to stop the Democrats from spending the federal dollars on the state campaign. It also is asking the State Elections Enforcement Commission to order Malloy to forfeit his public financing grant of $6.5 million for his campaign.
Connecticut –– Hartford Courant: Democrats Show Contempt For Election Law
EditorialThe state Democratic Party blew a truck-sized hole through its increasingly tattered reformist image this week.It did so with a mass mailing whose funding skirts state clean-election laws. The party sent the mailing out over the fierce objections of good-government groups — as well as the state Republican Party, which is going to court to try to stop it.The mailing touts Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s re-election. It was paid for with funds from the state party’s federal account — an account meant to help congressional, not state, campaigns and one that is liberally salted with contributions from state contractors.
Washington, DC –– Washington Post: Washington Post: Shadow anti-Catania campaign pops up in Congress Heights
By Mike DebonisSigns reading “DC CITIZENS AGAINST CATANIA” were spotted Thursday in the Congress Heights neighborhood of Ward 8 — a precinct that is 82 percent Democratic, according to voter registration records. They carried a “union bug” — a symbol indicating they were printed at a union shop — but no tagline indicating who paid for them, as required under city election law.“Let’s stop his war against the poor,” the signs say, with no specification of what that “war” might entail.Wesley Williams, a spokesman for the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance, said there is no political committee registered under the name “D.C. Citizens Against Catania” and said he would forward the matter to investigators. Bowser spokesman Joaquin McPeek said the campaign had nothing to do with the signs.
Ohio –– AP: Jerry Springer hits the road for Ohio candidate
The former campaign aide to Robert F. Kennedy served on Cincinnati’s city council — once winning back a seat after a prostitution scandal — and spent a year as mayor before a failed campaign for governor in 1982. He flirted with U.S. Senate bids before the 2000 and 2004 elections and toyed with another gubernatorial run in 2006.“There’s stuff I can do without personally running for office and that is to back causes and candidates,” he said.Springer has given at least $12,000 to gubernatorial candidate Ed FitzGerald, $10,000 to attorney general candidate David Pepper, and $5,000 to treasurer candidate Connie Pillich, according to state campaign finance reports this year. He also gave the state Democratic party at least $28,000. He planned to appear Thursday evening at a fundraiser for Turner.
