In the News
Center for Public Integrity: Pop-up PACs are spending big in Election 2018’s final days – but they’re hiding their bankrollers
By Ashley Balcerzak
Step 1. Pick a super PAC name, treasurer and bank account.
Step 2. File a short form with the Federal Election Commission.
Step 3. Wait until Oct. 18 to begin spending your money. That way, you won’t have to report your donors until an entire month after Election Day.
This isn’t just theory – it’s happening now. And Democrats are leading the way despite decrying political efforts funded by “dark money” – political cash that can’t be traced to its ultimate source.
A Center for Public Integrity analysis of federal campaign records indicates that three super PACs that have formed since Oct. 18 have reported spending a combined $1.4 million across three hotly contested U.S. Senate races and one U.S. House race…
Most notable among these just-formed groups is Texas Forever, a super PAC bashing Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas…
In a recent interview with the Dallas Morning News, [the treasurer of Texas Forever] declined to reveal the group’s donors but nevertheless called Cruz out for benefitting from conservative political groups’ secretive money: “Ted Cruz is a phony politician propped up by millions of out-of-state dark dollars who has spent the past six years doing favors for his special interest donors.” …
David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, which advocates against campaign finance regulations, said it’s “ironic” that liberals are engaging in such activity.
“If [Democrats] think disclosure is such a good idea, then why aren’t they doing it?” Keating mused.
First Amendment
Just Security: Why the First Amendment Does Not Protect Trump Campaign Collusion with Wikileaks and Russia
By Bob Bauer and Ryan Goodman
Despite the president’s signature hostility toward the press, the Trump campaign is strenuously trying to wrap itself and Wikileaks in the protective garb of the First Amendment in defending against a lawsuit involving the hacking and dissemination of Democratic National Committee emails in 2016.
The case involves a civil suit brought by a DNC employee and two Democratic donors whose private financial and personal information was disclosed by Wikileaks as part of the DNC hack. The legal maneuvers in this case are being closely watched for what they suggest about how the Trump lawyers may approach any allegations of collusion with the Kremlin and Wikileaks that come directly out of the Mueller investigation.
The campaign’s lawyers told a judge that even if the president and his lieutenants worked with Russians and Wikileaks to disseminate emails to influence the outcome of the presidential election, only the act of stealing those emails would be prohibited. The campaign and Wikileaks, on this view, acted like the news media in simply passing on the stolen information.
This line of argument is a striking distortion of the core principles of freedom of the press. It also relies on a demonstrable falsehood-that the Trump campaign had no involvement in the Kremlin and Wikileaks’ conspiracy to violate U.S. election law in acquiring and distributing the emails.
Intimidation
HuffPost: Congressman Jeff Fortenberry’s Chief Of Staff Threatens Professor For Liking Facebook Post
By Andy Campbell
Less than 130 people pressed “like” on a Facebook photo of a defaced campaign sign depicting Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) with googly eyes alongside a schoolyard reimagining of his name: Jeff Fartenberry…
The sign was enough of a problem for the congressman’s office that his chief of staff personally reached out to and then threatened one person who pressed “like” on the Facebook post depicting it.
That person is Ari Kohen, an associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As the Lincoln Journal Star reports, a Fortenberry campaign staffer took a screenshot of Kohen’s dastardly Facebook like last Thursday, then notified the congressman’s D.C. campaign office (and also, apparently, Kohen’s employers).
The next day, Kohen received a call from Fortenberry’s chief of staff…
“His intention was to violate my First Amendment rights; to have a chilling effect on faculty speech. That’s obviously hugely problematic by itself, and then he threatened me,” Kohen told HuffPost by phone. “If you listen to the recording, it’s very clear. It’s worded as a threat, and the way he says it, it comes off as aggressive.” …
Kohen said he did indeed send a thank you email and “also asked why people in positions of authority are using that authority to try and intimidate people.” He said he plans to release the full audio of the conversation soon…
Local conservative politicians in Nebraska have had some success in going after the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, too. State senators Steve Halloran, Tom Brewer and Steve Erdman assisted in getting a graduate student fired over a confrontation with a member of the conservative student group Turning Point USA.
Congress
Washington Monthly: To Fix Congress, Make It Bigger. Much Bigger.
By Lee Drutman
Across democracies, there is a correlation: the larger a nation’s districts, the less overall confidence its citizens have in government…
There’s no magic formula for the exact perfect size of a legislature. But bringing the House back to the ratio that stood in 1911-211,000 constituents to one representative-would be a good start. It would still put the U.S. toward the upper end of the thirty-six countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-ordination and Development, but we would no longer be a major outlier. To get there, in a nation of 333 million people, the 2021 House would need about 1,600 members. Bringing the House up to that level would likely go a long way toward reducing inequality and could restore much-needed trust in government. It would also have several other major benefits.
For one, expanding the House would strike a more powerful blow against the influence of money in politics than any past campaign finance regulation, simply by cutting down on the costs of campaigning-reducing the candidate demand instead of trying to cut off the supply. With one representative for 200,000 people, it’s much more feasible to run a grassroots, door-to-door campaign than when you’re trying to represent 765,000 people. It’s true that more campaigns could mean more money spent on House races overall, but the average cost would drop dramatically, giving less-deep-pocketed candidates a better chance. And it would mean that individual members, once in office, could spend more time with their constituents and less time hanging out with lobbyists and rich donors.
Another benefit would be added diversity. Today’s House is 80 percent male, and 80 percent white, with an average age of fifty-seven. Adding 1,165 new members would be a quick way to make the legislature look a lot more like the country it represents.
Online Speech Platforms
Daily Caller: Facebook Bans Susan B. Anthony List Ad For The 6th Time
By Mike Brest
Facebook took down two more advertisements funded by the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life organization, on Thursday, making the total number of Susan B. Anthony List ads deleted by Facebook a total of six.
The two ads deleted on Thursday endorsed two Republicans: Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Senate candidate Matt Rosendale. Facebook later changed their initial ruling on one of the ads hours after its initial deletion…
Back in October, the social media platform banned two other Susan B. Anthony List ads. Both of them were not endorsements for specific candidates but instead just encouraged voters to vote for pro-life candidates. Both of those ads were then reinstated.
Other ads advocating against Josh Welle and Sen. Claire McCaskill were also banned, according to Susan B. Anthony List’s twitter account…
Blackburn’s campaign also recently got banned from another social platform: Google Ads. Blackburn used video from protesters interrupting her moment of silence for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, but it was not approved because it contained “shocking content.”
Months ago, in Blackburn’s ad announcing her Senate campaign, she said that Planned Parenthood sold “baby body parts.” Twitter took down the video, but Facebook’s CEO Sheryl Sandberg said that their platform would’ve allowed the ad to stay.
Facebook has also had multiple controversies about what they’ve allowed and disallowed on their platform. Back in August, they apologized to Prager U for removing their videos, yet they also permitted Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic speeches to remain on their site.
Business Insider: We ran 2 fake ads pretending to be Cambridge Analytica – and Facebook failed to catch that they were frauds
By Shona Ghosh
Facebook’s new political ad transparency tools allowed Business Insider to run adverts as being “paid for” by Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy that dragged Facebook into a major data scandal this year…
We chose to run the ads over two days to a limited local audience in east London to test whether Facebook’s moderators or automated filters would pick up on the fake “paid for” disclosure or the Cambridge Analytica name.
Running a campaign and setting it live on Facebook requires further approvals from the company, separate from its requirements for running political ads. But at no point during the verification or approvals process did Facebook flag the ads for not meeting its standards.
The adverts were seen by Facebook users and brought to the attention of Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who blew open the Cambridge Analytica scandal in an interview with whistleblower Christopher Wylie in March.
Facebook confirmed that the adverts violated its policies, even though they were not caught during the approval process. The company did not explain how the adverts slipped the net.
A spokesman said: “This ad was not created by Cambridge Analytica. It is fake, violates our policies and has been taken down. We believe people on Facebook should know who is behind the political ads they’re seeing which is why we are creating the Ads Library so that you can see who is accountable for any political ad. We have tools for anyone to report suspicious activity such as this.” …
The company emphasised that it needs the help of users, journalists, and researchers to report suspicious activity.
PACs
Washington Free Beacon: J Street PAC ‘Skirting’ FEC Guidelines on Donations
By Todd Shepherd
Most PACs are standalone entities, meaning they exist independently of any nonprofit, corporation, or union. As such, those PACs can also accept donations from the general public.
However, J Street PAC is different. In 2011 it filed an amendment to its organizational structure with the FEC declaring that it was a “connected” PAC, registered as a “separate segregated fund.” This was a change from how the PAC was originally established in 2007…
Connected PACs benefit from being able to use money from their “sponsor” institution to defray some of the expenses of running the PAC, such as by sharing overhead expenses.
These PACs can only accept donations from persons who are members of the connected institution.
According to FEC rules, a person is a member of a PAC if they maintain a relationship with the sponsoring organization by having a “significant financial attachment, such as a significant investment or ownership stake,” in the sponsor institution, or by having the right to vote on issues like the election of board members, or the approval of an annual budget.
However, J Street PAC appears to be using the lowest possible standard of membership when allowing donations to the PAC. When one visits the PAC’s website, a pop-up window appears asking the visitor to become a member by submitting only their email address. The same pop-up window also states that membership is free.
It is possible J Street PAC may have saved tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars by having the underlying nonprofit 501(c)4 organization simply known as J Street share or combine some of the expenses for the PAC’s operation.
By Alexander Thorburn-Winsor and Paul Blumenthal
HuffPost’s April 2016 report investigated the tactics of End Citizens United… ECU, which worked to elect Democratic candidates who support campaign finance reform, used aggressive and expansive email campaigns to rake in millions of dollars in online donations. The PAC’s pushy tactics angered other nonprofits working toward campaign finance reform, which came to think of the PAC as an arm of the Democratic Party stealing their donors with deceptive email marketing.
Until this spring, HuffPost’s story was the second to come up in a generic Google search for “End Citizens United.” But in the spring of 2018, an anonymous U.S.-based contractor paid at least 3,800 workers in countries around the world through the crowdsourcing firm Microworkers to manipulate what stories would come up when people searched for the PAC in Google, according to public job listings on Microworkers reviewed by HuffPost. The contractor paid each of the workers 20 cents to click on stories and sites that portrayed the PAC positively, bumping those stories up in Google at the expense of critical coverage…
End Citizens United has never disclosed a payment to Microworkers or any other microwork platform. It probably doesn’t have to. If the PAC is behind the effort to downgrade negative search results, it likely hid the payment as an expense made through a contractor to a subvendor…
When Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign paid the research firm Fusion GPS to hire ex-British spy Christopher Steele to collect information on Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, it did not report the payment. Instead, the payment was routed through Perkins Coie, the Clinton campaign’s law firm, and described solely as “legal services.” This payment has been challenged in a complaint by the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog nonprofit group.
Candidates and Campaigns
Splinter: Democrats Who Swore Off Corporate Campaign Donations Are Still Getting a Boost From Big Money
By Libby Watson
The 2018 midterms have seen a huge number of Democrats pledge not to take money from corporate PACs. It’s a sign of the times: The Bernie Sanders-style rejection of money in politics is taking root among Democrats in a year when insurgent candidates from all walks of life are running, including a record number of women.
But publicly swearing off corporate PAC money is also a bit of a stunt. As the Atlantic pointed out in August, corporate PAC donations “don’t constitute a significant amount of any Democratic candidate’s funding, and nothing precludes candidates from accepting individual donations from corporate executives.” …
Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California Irvine and the author of Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections, told Splinter that he sees the trend as “marketing gimmick.” Corporate money is “not that important these days,” he said, but “what would be meaningful is if Democrats said that they don’t want any support from super PACs that might take corporate money or undisclosed money.”
So it’s worthwhile to ask whether the Democrats who swore off money from corporate PACs are also rejecting the help of super PACs and other outside groups. A Splinter review of campaign finance records shows that’s not the case. Several candidates on the ballot this Tuesday have benefitted from millions of dollars spent on their behalf by super PACs-some funded by small donors, some by wealthy donors, and some by a mix of both.
Fundraising
The Conversation: Campaign spending isn’t the problem – where the money comes from is
By Richard Briffault
For the first time, the cost of congressional elections is likely to surpass US$5 billion.
Certainly, $5 billion sounds like a lot to spend on a midterm election. But consider the stakes – our $4.4 trillion federal budget, our $20 trillion gross domestic product and a host of national policies, from immigration to health care to trade to the environment, may all be affected by the election’s outcome.
$5 billion is a record amount, the five top advertisers in the U.S. – Comcast, Procter & Gamble, AT&T, Amazon and GM – together spent $20 billion on advertising last year – or four times the money spent on campaign communications.
I’m a scholar who studies, among other subjects, campaign finance regulation. This surge in campaign spending is striking, but I believe the volume of campaign spending is not the main problem with our campaign finance system.
The real challenge for our democracy is where so much of this money comes from…
According to media reports – there is no formal tracking of these donors – this year has witnessed a striking increase in the number and importance of small donors. But big donors continue to be pivotal to the campaign finance system. And the financing role of a small number of very wealthy individuals inevitably distorts our political process…
The campaign finance system certainly has implications for the health of our democracy. But for those concerned with democratic representation, I believe their focus ought to be on the sources of campaign money – and on finding ways to bring in more small donations and no-strings-attached contributions – than on the spending itself.
Disclosure
Washington Free Beacon: Dark Money Mailers Target GOP Candidates in Missouri With No Disclosures
By Brent Scher
Two dark money mailers sent to thousands of voters without any disclosure of who paid for it-a likely illegal act-were sent by the same St. Louis printing company, which has been used by many Democratic campaigns in the state this cycle.
The two mailers-the first one targeting Republican representative Ann Wagner and the second targeting Republican Senate candidate Josh Hawley-both lack the standard disclosure statement identifying who paid for them, earning them quick criticism from state Republicans.
The Wagner campaign immediately called the mailer targeting the congresswoman illegal and said it would be filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. The Missouri Republican Party similarly called the mailer targeting Hawley illegal and called on his opponent Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.), a frequent critic of dark money groups, to condemn the mailer.
Though there is no disclaimer of who sent either mailer, the Free Beacon was able to identify the printer who sent out the mailers based on the postage permit number, which is the same on both…
Wagner’s campaign was able to identify the source of the mailer sent to voters in her district as Care in Action, a 501(c)4 organization that isn’t required to disclose its donors and has also not reported any spending in Wagner’s race to the FEC, which the Wagner campaign says is another illegal act.
Care in Action argued to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that it isn’t bound by election law because it doesn’t “expressly advocate” for Wagner’s reelection or defeat on the mailer.
A campaign finance expert told the paper that Care in Action’s argument doesn’t hold up, especially given the close proximity to the election.
The States
Washington City Paper: Cleared of Campaign Finance Violations, Bowser Takes Shot at Nonprofit That Accused Her
By Mitch Ryals
It turns out Mayor Muriel Bowser did not violate D.C. campaign finance laws, as the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen alleged last week.
Bowser appeared on CSPAN’s Washington Journal as part of its 50 Capitals Tour today and again suggested that At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman was behind the the complaint, this time adding that it “raises a lot of issues about Public Citizen’s nonprofit status.”
Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, fired back, calling Bowser’s questioning of the organization’s tax status a “Trump-like tactic.”
“We are disappointed that the mayor would sink as low as she has,” Weissman’s statement says. “We understand the mayor is in the middle of a campaign and that sharp elbows will be thrown. But the occupant of the White House, in our city, has debased and degraded political discourse with baseless attacks on his opponents, including threatening their nonprofit tax status. We expect better from our mayor.”…
Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen who filed the complaint, noted in the complaint that Reeder’s campaign coffers swelled by about $100,000 after Bowser announced her endorsement.
Silverman has acknowledged that she tipped off Public Citizen to the potential violation.
Cincinnati Enquirer: Aftab Pureval’s campaign fined $100 for photography expense, rest of campaign finance complaint dismissed
By Jessie Balmert
Most of the allegations of campaign misspending against Democratic congressional candidate Aftab Pureval were dismissed Thursday, but the panel that oversees Ohio elections law concluded one campaign expenditure violated state law.
The Ohio Elections Commission found Pureval’s campaign violated state election laws by using money from his bid for county clerk of courts to pay for photography related to his effort to unseat Republican Rep. Steve Chabot.
The penalty: a $100 fine.
The rest of the complaint against Pureval, including concerns that he paid $16,400 for a portion of a poll used to explore his congressional bid, was dismissed. After a six-hour-long hearing Thursday, the Ohio Elections Commission couldn’t decide whether a violation occurred with the poll.
“Today, we are vindicated — the Ohio Ethics Commission agrees,” Pureval told reporters at a post-hearing news conference in Cincinnati. “Twenty-eight out of 29 complaints were dismissed as utterly baseless. The one issue found was a mistake, a clerical error that resulted in $100 fine, because one of my staff members hit the wrong number on Venmo.”
