In the News
Politico Pro: Mysterious FEC legal report on Crossroads finally made public
Theodric Meyer
Allen Dickerson, the Center for Competitive Politics’ legal director, said he identified two major differences between the report the FEC made public, which outlined the general counsel’s official legal reasoning in the Crossroads case, and the earlier one it fought to keep hidden.
In the first report, the FEC’s lawyers argued that Crossroads GPS’ close ties American Crossroads, its sister super PAC, were “germane to the issue of whether” Crossroads GPS was really a political group required to report its donors. Super PACs like American Crossroads are explicitly political and can accept unlimited donations, but unlike nonprofits, they must publish their donors’ names.
Using that standard to establish whether a group was primarily political would have had major effects on the outside money landscape. Since the report was written, it has become more common for groups on the left and the right to have both super PAC and nonprofit arms. “I think it’s notable that the general counsel’s office completely backed off that theory,” Dickerson said.
The draft report also suggested that a nonprofit could be crossing the legal line if it devoted a “plurality” of its spending to politics, rather than a majority. It’s another standard that could have totally changed how the world of undisclosed outside money developed over the last few years – but, again, it’s one that the final FEC legal report didn’t actually include.
The recommendations in the first report never came close to being adopted by the commissioners, who are rarely able to agree in big cases, and it’s still unclear exactly why the Republican commissioners pushed so hard to release it.
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Congress
CBS News: Lawmakers strike major spending deal
Rebecca Shabad
Congressional leaders late Tuesday reached a deal on a $1.1 trillion spending package to fund the government through next September, and on a package to extend and make permanent some expired tax provisions.
The text of the more than 2,000-page spending bill was posted very early Wednesday morning after weeks of negotiations between Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill over contentious policy riders…
Democrats “beat back about 150 Republican riders,” a senior Senate leadership aide said. There are no riders, for example, that target the Dodd-Frank Wall Street financial reform law or environmental regulations, and there is no campaign finance provision that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, had been pushing.
IRS
Wall Street Journal: The IRS Targets Political Donors
Editorial Board
The IRS regulatory assault on political nonprofits continues, albeit out of the media glare. In September the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department proposed a rule to give 501(c)(3) charities the “option” of filing detailed reports on every donor who contributes more than $250. These reports would include names, addresses and Social Security numbers. Oh, oh.
While the IRS says the rule is “voluntary,” in government that’s often a prelude to compulsory. The legitimate fear in the nonprofit world, on the right and left, is that this is a first step toward making such donor lists mandatory, and then applying the requirement to every nonprofit—including the conservative social-welfare organizations that the IRS helped to shut down in the 2012 presidential election.
Independent Groups
Wall Street Journal: Campaign Ads Flood the Airwaves But Don’t Seem to Move the Polls — Report
Rebecca Ballhaus
The volume of ads airing in the Republican primary race is up 45% from the same period in 2011—but more ads aren’t necessarily pushing up poll numbers, according to a new report released Tuesday.
More than 44,000 ads have been aired so far in the GOP race, up from more than 30,000 at this point in 2011 and more than 26,000 at this point in 2007, according to the report from by the Wesleyan Media Project, which analyzed Kantar Media/CMAG data through Dec. 9 of this year. Outside groups have also grown more prolific, airing more than 80% of the ads this year—up from less than 69% in 2011.
USA Today: Super PACs dominate airwaves in presidential contest
Fredreka Schouten
The analysis of TV ads between Jan. 1 and Dec. 9 finds that the volume of GOP presidential commercials is soaring compared to previous elections, and deep-pocketed super PACs and other independent groups are dominating the airwaves. In all, outside groups have sponsored a whopping 81% of the ads so far in the Republican primary, up from 67% at this point in the 2012 campaign and just 1% at the same stage of the 2008 campaign, way back before the federal courts paved the way for super PACs, which can take unlimited amounts of money from virtually any source.
But get this: Jeb Bush and his super PAC have paid for more ads than any other GOP candidate —15,750 ads at a cost of nearly $26 million — and he’s languishing in the polls. GOP front-runner Donald Trump, meanwhile, has aired no ads, and Ted Cruz, who has pulled ahead in recent polls in Iowa, has benefited from just 457 ads.
Vox: Republican megadonors are sad that elections are so hard to buy
Ezra Klein
The correlation, in case you’re wondering, is -0.2 — that is to say, ad spending is negatively correlated with polling averages in the Republican primary so far. (Which is one reason it’s odd that Marco Rubio is betting so heavily on ad spending.)…
This is, however, the time when you’d expect ads to have the most impact on the presidential race — the candidates are still relatively unknown, the airwaves remain relatively unclogged, and voter perceptions remain relatively soft. The fact that ads appear to be having basically no impact in the race — and are barely being used by the frontrunner — is good news for people who like bad news about the efficacy of political advertising.
And in truth, that should be all of us (unless you’re a political consultant or an ad producer). The big lesson here is that elections (particularly presidential elections) are actually really hard to buy. The modal outcome of a millionaire (or billionaire) spending a lot of money to influence an election is that the millionaire wastes his money. This holds true when the spending is on behalf of someone else (like with Langone and Romney), and it’s true when the millionaire or billionaire is spending on his own campaign.
Boston Herald: Super PAC spending hasn’t bought Bush a better poll position
Kimberly Atkins
The pro-Bush Right to Rise USA has poured more than $25 million into broadcast and cable advertising, buying nearly 16,000 television spots — primarily in the Boston/New Hampshire market — making it the biggest campaign spender so far, according to a new report by the Center for Responsive Politics and Wesleyan Media Project.
But the rate of return has been terrible: recent polling has Bush lagging in the single digits, far behind Republican front-runners Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, though Trump has made no TV ad buys and groups supporting Cruz have aired only a few hundred spots so far — at a cost of only $300,000.
Influence
Bloomberg: Buffett Takes to the Stump as Clinton Looks to Shore Up Iowa
Noah Buhayar and Jennifer Epstein
“A lot of people admire Warren,” he said. “I believe that he can influence voting, but I don’t know how much.”…
Buffett was the main draw at an event in New York last week, for which a dozen mostly Wall Street attendees committed $33,400 each to the Hillary Victory Fund, and will join Clinton on Wednesday morning in Omaha for what’s being billed as a conversation between the two. Tickets start at $500 and go up to $2,700 for donors who want a photo with both. Those who raise $27,000 or more will have access to a reception with the candidate and billionaire.
Supreme Court
Constitution Daily: The Supreme Court as a 2016 campaign issue
Scott Bomboy
So far, the major prospective candidates for the Democratic and Republican nomination have taken some scattered shots at recent Supreme Court decisions, and a few of the Justices, but the Court has mostly taken a back seat to other campaign subjects.
That is expected to change as the current group of nine Justices announce big decisions about Obamacare, public unions, one-person-one-vote and affirmative action just before the GOP and Democratic conventions get under way this summer.
Here’s a quick look at what the major candidates are saying about the Supreme Court in general – with a few clues about who they may appoint to the Court if they are elected in November 2016.
Wisconsin ‘John Doe’
Wisconsin Journal Sentinel: 2 DAs back away from bid to revive probe into Walker campaign
Patrick Marley
In a letter and court filing last week, Dodge County District Attorney Kurt Klomberg wrote he would not seek to intervene in litigation over the probe as a way to get the matter before the U.S. Supreme Court. Columbia County District Attorney Jane Kohlwey sent a nearly identical letter on Monday.
Special prosecutor Francis Schmitz has said he wants the nation’s high court to get involved.
“I am writing to inform you that I will not be seeking intervention,” Klomberg wrote four other district attorneys on Dec. 9. “I also write to provide you notice that I will not agree to appoint any of you as the prosecutor of the Dodge County portion of this matter.”
Candidates and Campaigns
National Journal: Political Campaigns Are Spying on You, and There Are No Rules to Stop Them
Brendan Sasso
One of the reasons that campaigns are able to collect data so easily is that much of the information they’re after is already public. Campaign finance and election laws are focused on promoting transparency, not protecting privacy. So a person’s name, gender, date of birth, address, party affiliation, donation history, and voting history (when they voted but not for whom they voted) is often available in public records.
The States
LaCrosse Tribune: Elections board prepares for campaign finance
Todd Richmond, Associated Press
The state Government Accountability Board got ready Tuesday to implement a sweeping campaign finance overhaul and deal with its own elimination.
Gov. Scott Walker is expected to sign bills as early as today that would dramatically rewrite Wisconsin’s campaign finance regulations and re-form the GAB into a pair of partisan commissions.
The campaign finance proposal clarifies that candidates can coordinate with outside groups that don’t disclose their donors on “issue ads,” communications that criticize a candidate’s policies and stances but don’t specifically call for his defeat. The bill also doubles how much money individuals can donate to statewide candidates to $20,000, eliminates a requirement that donors who give more than $100 identify their employers and for the first time allows corporate donations to political parties and legislative campaign committees.
