In the News
Center for Public Integrity: Groups decrying ‘dark money’ use shadowy money themselves
Liz Essley Whyte
The Center for Public Integrity found 21 groups, vocal about so-called dark money, that put money into politics but do not fully disclose their donors. The groups either gave to ballot measure campaigns, paid for messages about candidates or gave to political action committees…
But many of the groups identified by the Center for Public Integrity said that they already exceed what the law requires by disclosing at least some of their donors. Some relied on an argument that opponents of disclosure raise regularly: Their donors could face hostility or mistreatment if the public knew the donors’ identities…
“It’s obviously hypocritical,” said David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, a conservative nonprofit that does not disclose its donors and argues against disclosure. “It also proves our point that many donors do value their privacy and won’t give money if they know their information is going to post.”
Disclosure
New York Times: Ted Cruz Didn’t Disclose Loan From Goldman Sachs for His First Senate Campaign
Mike McIntire
A review of personal financial disclosures that Mr. Cruz filed later with the Senate does not find a liquidation of assets that would have accounted for all the money he spent on his campaign. What it does show, however, is that in the first half of 2012, Ted and Heidi Cruz obtained the low-interest loan from Goldman Sachs, as well as another one from Citibank. The loans totaled as much as $750,000 and eventually increased to a maximum of $1 million before being paid down later that year. There is no explanation of their purpose.
Neither loan appears in reports the Ted Cruz for Senate Committee filed with the Federal Election Commission, in which candidates are required to disclose the source of money they borrow to finance their campaigns. Other campaigns have been investigated and fined for failing to make such disclosures, which are intended to inform voters and prevent candidates from receiving special treatment from lenders. There is no evidence that the Cruzes got a break on their loans.
Koch Brothers
New York Times: Review: Jane Mayer’s ‘Dark Money,’ About the Koch Brothers’ Fortune and Influence
David Nasaw
“Dark Money,” the result of Ms. Mayer’s research, is a persuasive, timely and necessary story of the Koch brothers’ empire. It may read overly long and include some familiar material, but only the most thoroughly documented, compendious account could do justice to the Kochs’ bizarre and Byzantine family history and the scale and scope of their influence.
Ms. Mayer begins with Fred Koch, the family patriarch. “Oddly enough,” she writes, “the fiercely libertarian Koch family owed part of its fortune to two of history’s most infamous dictators, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler,” for whose regimes Mr. Koch’s company built oil refineries in the 1930s.
Washington Post: Koch Industries responds to allegations in forthcoming book
Tom Hamburger
To refute the claims in the forthcoming book, “Dark Money,” by New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, the firm examined archival corporate records, Robertson wrote. At the time, he said, the Winkler-Koch company, as it was then known, “worked on hundreds of other international projects” in nine countries, including the United States. In 1933, six years before Germany invaded Poland, Winkler Koch agreed to build a part of a planned refinery near Hamburg, Germany. At that time, Robertson said, “many iconic U.S. companies were doing business in Germany, including Coca-Cola, General Motors, Ford and IBM.”
The memo accused Mayer of cherry-picking one project among hundreds, in which Koch provided only part of the work. Using this fact “out of context in order to further an agenda-driven storyline is grossly inaccurate,” it said.
Washington Free Beacon: Phalange-linked Paper Attacks Dead Father of Koch Brothers
Free Beacon Staff
The New York Times continues to wield influence in the American political conversation despite the fact that its largest individual shareholder is a secretive Mexican oligarch with a shadowy past. Its story on the Koch family’s business activities in early Nazi Germany garnered significant coverage on Tuesday.
Confessore, the story’s author, previously worked for The American Prospect, a left-wing magazine with a very small circulation that has been supported by the Ford Foundation, which was founded by the son of notorious Nazi sympathizer Henry Ford with money that came in part from the export of Ford manufacturing technology that would fuel the Nazi war machine.
Reason: Are the Koch Brothers Right-Wingers or Hippies?
Jacob Sullum
A lot of this indeed radical, but it is not exactly right-wing, is it? In fact, many people on the left would be comfortable with most or even all of these planks, while self-identified progressives (perhaps including Mayer and Nasaw) would at least be sympathetic to the impulses behind them. But if you emphasize (or even note in passing) that David Koch ran for vice president on a platform that called for the legalization of drugs and prostitution, supported abortion rights, opposed legal discrimination based on sexual orientation, demanded big cuts to the defense budget and a less interventionist foreign policy, opposed all forms of censorship, defended the rights of the accused, decried crackdowns on unauthorized immigrants, and condemned invasions of privacy by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, you make him sound like some sort of hippie, as opposed to a crazy right-winger. More to the point, you make it much harder to demonize him and his brother among people who read The New York Times and The New Yorker.
Independent Groups
Politico: Pro-Jeb Bush super PAC shuts down
Anna Palmer
The pro-Jeb Bush super PAC Vamos for Jeb 2016 is shuttering its doors.
The group, which was formed by political website Elephant News founder Claire Hardwick, sent a letter to the Federal Election Commission Tuesday announcing its decision to disband.
“The committee has not raised nor dispersed any funds and would like to accordingly terminate and be discontinued,” wrote Andrea Wong, the treasurer for the super PAC. “Up to this point the only activity done were social media pages on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook which have been deactivated.”
Washington Post: Bush and his super PAC are on the attack – but aiming at different targets
Ed O’Keefe
A new television ad by Right to Rise USA airing in early primary states shows Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) twisting in the wind on a weathervane as an announcer describes his shifting position on immigration reform.
“He ran for Senate saying he opposed amnesty,” it says. “Then he flipped and worked with liberal Chuck Schumer to co-author the path to citizenship bill.”
But out on the campaign trail, Bush rarely talks about Rubio — he’s more focused on Republican front-runner Donald Trump.
“I hope that you’ll get involved in our effort to defeat Donald Trump and to propel me forward,” Bush told voters at the public library here on Tuesday.
Campaign Contributions
Daily Caller: Solving Campaign Finance Problems Through The Tax Code
Brad Crate
The tax code is a political animal and reflects policy priorities and preferences. Some activities are encouraged and others are discouraged. Rather than silly ideas such as cash vouchers for campaign contributions or public financing, here’s a new idea that would encourage broader political participation by low-dollar donors as well as encourage new candidates to get in the ring. The tax code should be amended to allow certain political contributions to be tax deductible. 1) Any contribution (up to federal contribution limits) that goes towards debt retirement for a losing campaign should be deductible. 2) Any contribution $1,000 or less that ended up going to a losing campaign, regardless of the existence of debt, should receive retroactive tax deductibility effective the date of the election results being certified.
Free Speech
The Federalist: Thank Citizens United That You Can See ‘13 Hours’ This Weekend
Kyle Sammin
This brings us back to “13 Hours.” The film, distributed by Paramount Pictures (a for-profit corporation), by all accounts does not expressly advocate an opinion about Clinton or suggest that she is unfit for office. But the Obama administration’s opinion of its power under BCRA is so broad, it is not a great leap to suppose they would think any communication of important issues related to a candidate would constitute electioneering.
Would a Congress with the power to prohibit some corporate speech continue to allow other corporate speech based on the simple expedient the speaker of not expressly advocating for or against an individual candidate? Without Citizens United, nothing would stop them from further restricting the marketplace of political ideas.
Whether they would or not, the Supreme Court agreed with the drafters of the First Amendment that Congress cannot be trusted to make that decision.
Candidates and Campaigns
Wall Street Journal: Jeb Bush Plays Down Political Ads’ Effectiveness
Rebecca Ballhaus
The former Florida governor, discussing campaign ads with reporters after a breakfast event here on Wednesday, said voters “have a way of kind of filtering all this out and making their decisions based on the information they have.” His super PAC, Right to Rise USA, has spent more than $60 million so far on ads, more than any other campaign or super PAC.
Indeed, the pro-Bush ads haven’t been particularly effective. Mr. Bush is in fifth place nationally, with less than 5% support, according to a Real Clear Politics of recent national polls. In Iowa, where his super PAC has aired millions of dollars’ worth of ads attacking Mr. Bush’s rivals, he is in also in fifth place.
The States
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Elections board says parties must report corporate donations
Patrick Marley
The Government Accountability Board, which oversees campaign finance laws, in December declined to take action on how the corporate, union and tribal donations must be reported. As a result, the board’s staff told the parties and campaign committees they did not need to report those donations.
But legislative leaders, a nonpartisan attorney for the Legislature and one of the state’s best known campaign finance attorneys disagreed with that conclusion. They argued the contributions must be reported, saying the only question was whether they had to be disclosed on the parties’ and committees’ regular campaign finance reports or in separate filings.
On Tuesday, the accountability board voted 6-0 to require the parties and committees controlled by legislative leaders to report their corporate, union and tribal donations in supplemental reports.
Event Reminder: CCP-Cato Institute Conference on January 26, 2015: The Past and Future of Buckley v. Valeo
On January 30, 1976, the United States Supreme Court handed down Buckley v. Valeo, still its most important decision at the intersection of campaign finance and the First Amendment. The Court brought forth a per curiam opinion that invalidated significant parts of the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act. The Buckley Court denied Congress the power to limit campaign spending. But not completely. The same Court decided Congress could restrict contributions to candidates to prevent quid pro quo corruption or “the appearance of corruption.” Giving citizens an “equal voice” in elections, however, could not justify suppressing speech.
Buckley remains a vital precedent that restrains and empowers Congress. But should Buckley be considered a First Amendment failure? Or did it embrace inevitable compromises that were both worse and better than everyone desired? How does Buckley affect the law and American politics and campaigning today? Does the decision have a future? Please join us to discuss these essential questions of First Amendment law and politics.
The January 26 event is free of charge and will be held at The Cato Institute at 1000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW in Washington, DC. The program will begin at 9:00 AM and conclude at 12:30 PM with a luncheon to follow. Speakers are still being finalized, but CCP Chairman Bradley A. Smith will be speaking. More information, including an agenda, can be found here. All those interested in attending should RSVP at the following link.
