In the News
Wall Street Journal: Campaign Finance Confusion
Center for Competitive Politics President David Keating on the Republican presidential candidate’s comments on campaign-finance reform.
New Hampshire Primary
Newsday: Trump, Sanders victorious in New Hampshire primaries
Associated Press
For some Republican leaders, Trump and Cruz’s back-to-back victories add urgency to the need to coalesce around a more mainstream candidate to challenge them through the primaries. However, it was unclear whether New Hampshire’s contest would clarify that slice of the field, with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush all locked in a tight race, along with Cruz.
RealClearPolitics: Sanders NH Victory Speech: “Tonight We Serve Notice To The Political And Economic Establishment”
Pema Levy
“Tonight we serve notice to the political and economic establishment of this country that the American people will not continue to accept a corrupt campaign finance system that is undermining American democracy, and we will not accept a rigged economy where ordinary Americans work longer hours for lower wages while almost all new income and wealth goes to the top 1%.”
Washington Post: Marco Rubio self-destructs in New Hampshire
Dana Milbank
Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Marco Rubio knows what he’s doing.
A week ago, the youthful senator from Florida was in great shape. His surprisingly strong finish in the Iowa caucuses left him with a clear chance to consolidate mainstream Republican support — and a path to the GOP presidential nomination.
But in just a few minutes Saturday night, Rubio undid everything he had worked for during the past year…
The culprit here, as in most things that have gone wrong this campaign season, is Donald Trump, who after his convincing win in New Hampshire is once again the front-runner for the nomination. Typically, Iowa and New Hampshire serve as proving grounds for the candidates. Voters there scrutinize the contenders, who rise and fall in the polls as various candidates gain and lose the status of front-runner. But Trump’s celebrity short-circuited the process.
Dangers of Disclosure
Washington Times: Forced donor disclosure is bad for democracy
Hans von Spakovsky
Despite our divisions, we remain a stable democracy in which we are free to debate and argue — almost always without violence — the paths we should follow as a nation. Underpinning that stability is the First Amendment, which protects our right to advocate and contribute money to the candidates and causes we believe in.
It includes our right to band together in associations — to join organizations of like-minded people, whether we find them in the National Rifle Association or the Sierra Club. Such organizations elevate the voice of the average American, helping each be heard on issues important to them.
That is why it is concerning that self-styled “reformers” such as California Attorney General Kamala Harris want to force nonprofit advocacy organizations to hand over their donor lists to the government when they engage in political speech and policy discussions that might affect an election.
“Money in Politics”
Vox: The great money-in-politics myth
Dylan Matthews
This point becomes clearer if you try to imagine how progressive legislation would get through in a world where reforms like public financing and better congressional staffing were passed. One possibility is that those reforms just mean the Democrats constantly win majorities. But Arizona and Maine’s experiences suggest that’s not really the case. And if it isn’t, why do we think Republicans in such a world will suddenly be eager to pass welfare state expansions?
“The key question is whether Republican candidates would be supportive of [single-payer] without campaign contributions — I think the answer is no here,” political scientist Shannon Jenkins at UMass Dartmouth adds. “Rather, it reflects a longstanding and deep-seated aversion in the United States to large government programs and American political culture generally.”
Independent Groups
CPI: Will Jeb Bush’s TV blitz add up?
Cady Zuvich and Dave Levinthal
For months, Bush and his supportive super PAC, Right to Rise USA, have saturated Granite State airwaves — sponsoring roughly one third of all TV ads in the Republican race.
In the past week alone, the Bush campaign-super PAC duo aired more than 1,400 TV ads in New Hampshire, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of broadcast and national cable data from media tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG.
That’s more than any other Republican candidate’s operation.
Huffington Post: Former Presidential Candidate Laughed At The Idea Of A Super PAC, Then Lost Immediately
Jason Cherkis and Sam Stein
The problem was simple. “We didn’t have the money to stay in long enough to get a full and fair hearing,” Pawlenty told us…
Before the two began their runs for the presidency, Romney met privately with Pawlenty and, as Pawlenty recalled, the subject of the super PAC came up…
“[Romney] said, ‘Timmy, have you thought about or heard about, you know, in the wake of this court decision, this thing called the super PAC?’” Pawlenty recalled.
Pawlenty admitted that he thought the whole idea was pretty funny. “I remember laughing afterwards with some of my staff and team and consultants. I’d say, ‘Yeah I need a super PAC too!’ I didn’t even know what it was,” he said.
CPI: Stealth Christie group attacks Rubio ahead of New Hampshire primary
Michael Beckel
Mailers sent to New Hampshire residents have criticized Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida, for not being tough enough on illegal immigration and for utilizing a subsidy under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare…
Christie, New Jersey’s governor, desperately needs to beat Rubio in New Hampshire to energize his sputtering campaign. Rubio has enjoyed rising poll numbers after his strong third-place finish last week in Iowa, where Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump narrowly edged him out.
According to the Columbus Dispatch, America Needs Leadership has also targeted another Christie rival with negative mailers, Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
The Hill: IRS gives ‘social welfare’ status to Karl Rove group
Jonathan Swan
After deliberating for more than five years, the IRS sent a letter to Crossroads GPS in November telling the group that it qualifies under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, allowing it to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money while keeping its donors’ identities secret.
The only catch is that, under the current vague interpretation of the law, more than half of the group’s spending must be on “social welfare” activities.
SEC
The Hill: Group asks court to compel disclosure of corporate cash in politics
Lydia Wheeler
An advocacy group is asking the nation’s second most powerful court to force action from the Obama administration on political spending by corporations.
A petition filed by the Campaign for Accountability (CfA) on behalf of Stephen Silberstein seeks to have the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) propose a rule that would require corporations to disclosure their political spending.
FEC
More Soft Money Hard Law: The Federal Election Commission’s Role in A Reform Program
Bob Bauer
The Federal Election Commission has not solved the “Super PAC problem,” but then again the Commissioners cannot agree on what the problem is. Others outside the agency are divided in this same way. A number of questions in contemporary campaign finance are like that. Because positions are passionately held, each side is convinced that the other is not merely mistaken but dead wrong, maybe also ill-motivated. Given the chance, proponents and opponents of new rules would like to win however they can.
So there is the hope that the Supreme Court can be shifted by a vote toward a more favorable judgment on congressional power to control campaign finance. And proposals are made to strengthen the FEC for a more decisive role.
Coordination
Gawker: This Is How Hillary Clinton Gets the Coverage She Wants
J.K. Trotter
While it may be true that the political press doesn’t always write exactly what Clinton would like, emails recently obtained by Gawker offer a case study in how her prodigious and sophisticated press operation manipulates reporters into amplifying her desired message—in this case, down to the very word that The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder used to describe an important policy speech.
The emails in question, which were exchanged by Ambinder, then serving as The Atlantic’s politics editor, and Philippe Reines, Clinton’s notoriously combative spokesman and consigliere, turned up thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request we filed in 2012 (and which we are currently suing the State Department over)… In them, you can see Reines “blackmailing” Ambinder into describing a Clinton speech as “muscular” in exchange for early access to the transcript. In other words, Ambinder outsourced his editorial judgment about the speech to a member of Clinton’s own staff.
Candidates and Campaigns
Mother Jones: Clinton Embraces Sanders’ Message After Big New Hampshire Loss
Pema Levy
After a big loss to Bernie Sanders in the New Hampshire Democratic primary Tuesday, Hillary Clinton used her concession speech to shift the focus to the South Carolina and Nevada contests and beyond, and tout her progressive credentials on issues that have dominated Sanders’ rising campaign—namely campaign finance reform and the power of Wall Street…
Clinton recalled that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision was instigated by a conservative group attempting to air an anti-Hillary Clinton film in 2008—a point she hasn’t yet incorporated into her stump speech or raised in debates. “So yes, you’re not going to find anyone more committed to aggressive campaign finance reform than me,” Clinton told the cheering crowd, her voice hoarse from campaigning.
Reason: Hillary Clinton: Citizens United Is Tragic for America Because It Allowed People to Criticize Me
Brian Doherty
This is a common theme for her, personalizing an allegedly destructive expansion of the First Amendment and free political speech which is so bad because it harmed her.
And it is what all the angry brouhaha about Citizens United is about: Politicians trying to limit the circumstances under which Americans can band together in certain legal structures and say bad things about them. That is the principle that Clinton and her fans cheer: that government should have more power to make it illegal to criticize politicians.
It’s a little weird and creepy, but then a lot about American politics today is.
Weekly Standard: Jeb Bush’s Terrible Campaign Finance Idea
Jay Cost
Super PACs cannot coordinate with politicians, so it is very hard for them to purchase influence the same way lobbyists who work the inside game do. Their methodology is also different than lobbyists who make donations to their patrons. Super PACs make direct appeals to the public, while the typical approach is just to hand cash to politicians. For incumbents, the purpose of raising all this cash in the traditional way is to intimidate challengers from running, thus securing reelection without giving voters a real choice. The Super PACs can cut directly against that. They can help worthy candidates who are struggling to raise funds in the traditional way. They certainly have their problems, but in theory they are a tool for outsiders to challenge the status quo.
But Bush would do away with all of this.
New Hampshire Union Leader: Money for nothing: What’s Bernie’s problem again?
Editorial Board
Like a hammer who sees every problem as a nail, Sen. Bernie Sanders seems to think that the way to solve every challenge America faces is by “getting big money out of politics.”
We fail to see the problem.
Despite the backing of the entire Democratic machine, Hillary Clinton’s fund raising edge has evaporated. Sanders raised $20 million in January compared to Clinton’s $15 million.
Sanders spent far more on television ads leading up to today’s New Hampshire primary, $2.8 million to Clinton’s $800,000.
Does Sanders think he’s buying the election?
