CCP
We give Fact Checker one-half Pinocchio: Super PACs and our complex campaign finance system
Brad Smith
Back when I was serving as Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, I met with a delegation of officials from China. Since they spoke little English, we conversed through an interpreter. They were full of questions about campaign finance in the U.S., and soon I was trying to explain our incredibly regulated, complex system. There was money spent “for the purpose of influencing an election,” and money spent for “federal election activity.” There were “electioneering communications,” “express advocacy of election or defeat,” and “generic campaign activity.” This went on for some time until finally the interpreter was forced to tell me, “We have to stop. There are no words to make these distinctions in translation.”
This comes to mind because of a column this week by The Washington Post’s Fact Checker. Michelle Ye Hee Lee, reporting for Fact Checker, writes that Bernie Sanders claim not to have a Super PAC is “a guaranteed drink for Debate Night Bingo.”
Ms. Lee then examines Sanders’ claim.
Free Speech
Washington Post: Progressives’ anti-free speech itch
George F. Will
Since then, college campuses have been responsive to people eager to regulate what others say, hear and see. Now, in the name of campaign finance reform, progressives such as Sanders and Clinton want to expand government’s regulatory reach to political speech.
Both are ardent for equality and, as Brown foresaw, the argument for economic equality easily becomes an argument for equalizing political influence. The argument is: Government regulates or seizes property in the name of equity, so why not also, for the same reason, regulate the quantity, content and timing of speech intended to “influence elections”?
Supreme Court
Wall Street Journal: The Supreme Court After Scalia
Editorial Board
The more consequential cases are over the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers that President Obama has so abused to serve his political goals. Take the First and Second Amendments. The Friedrichs case on coerced union dues that the Court is scheduled to rule on this year is probably now a 4-4 tie. That would let stand the mistaken Ninth Circuit ruling that denies workers their right not to support political causes they oppose. The Little Sisters of the Poor are also now likely to lose their religious-liberty challenge to ObamaCare’s coerced subsidies for abortion…
Also in peril would be Citizens United and other rulings that struck down limits on financing political campaigns. The lawyer for the Obama Administration said during oral argument for Citizens United that even books could be banned as an independent campaign expenditure. Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton say they want to rewrite the First Amendment to limit campaign donations, and it would take a brave liberal to buck that pressure.
Washington Post: Why Antonin Scalia was a jurist of colossal consequence
George F. Will
Scalia’s death will enkindle a debate missing from this year’s presidential campaign, a debate discomfiting for some conservatives: Do they want a passive court that is deferential to legislative majorities and to presidents who claim untrammeled powers deriving from national majorities? Or do they want a court actively engaged in defending liberty’s borders against unjustified encroachments by majorities?
This is an overdue argument that conservatism is now prepared for because of Scalia’s elegant mind. He was crucial to the creation of an alternative intellectual infrastructure for conservative law students. The Federalist Society, founded in 1982, has leavened the often monochrome liberalism of law schools, and Scalia has been the jurisprudential lodestar for tens of thousands of students in society chapters coast to coast.
Independent Groups
Minneapolis Star Tribune: This campaign, big money has met its match
Dan Hofrenning
Big money is a loser this year. Jeb Bush and his super PAC have raised more money than all of his competitors — yet he barely climbed out of single digits in New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton has received more endorsements and more contributions, yet Bernie Sanders is giving her a run for her money. A bombastic socialist challenging the quintessential pillar of the political establishment is surely testimony to the power of the people. Money has not bought this election.
This evidence contradicts the theory that nominees are not chosen in Iowa and New Hampshire, but in an “invisible primary” that takes place in the year or so before the first votes are cast. Super PACs and the boardrooms of the wealthy elite are the controlling forces of this supposed conclave.
Clinton and Bush won the invisible primary for the 2016 election. They raised more money and received more endorsements than their rivals. More of their money came through large donations.
More Soft Money Hard Law: Super PACs and Concerns about Political Equality
Bob Bauer
At the same time, there is room for reform–some adjustment to the regulatory process–that would account for the Super PACs’ emergence and widening impact. Transparency measures can clearly identify for the public those single-candidate Super PACs operating with the candidate’s active support and involvement. Additional resources could be made available to other actors–parties and others–that are now more regulated than Super PACs and, and in part for that reason, steadily losing ground to them. The goal would not be a deregulated campaign finance system but one that is more rationally structured and coherent.
Rick Hasen worries that the “cure may be worse than the disease.” He is suspicious or concerned that this is a move to restore the soft-money days that McCain-Feingold was supposed to close out. But the proposal is not inspired by special solicitude for parties. Parties are one of a number of electorally active organizations that would benefit from an infusion of resources but there is no case for making them the only ones. Targeted regulatory relief should be available for other membership-based organizations, and even to candidates when conducting particular voter mobilization activities.
New York Times: PAC Is Backing Donald Trump, Despite Campaign’s Policy
Maggie Haberman
Dan Backer, an election lawyer working with TrumPAC, explained that the group is a “hybrid,” meaning there are two separate bank accounts: one that directs regulated donations to the campaign, and another that collects money for a super PAC, which can raise unlimited funds. He said that several hundred dollars had already been given to the campaign. He declined to say what kind of interactions the group might have had with the campaign in terms of directing donations to them.
All of this gets somewhat confusing, since Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he doesn’t want super PAC support and has made turning down large donations a staple of his candidacy. He often says he is funding his own campaign, a statement that is true to a point — he has loaned his campaign $12 million but has also raised millions in small donations.
Center for Responsive Politics: How Crossroads GPS beat the IRS and became a social welfare group
Robert Maguire
The following May, GPS’ lawyers sent the IRS two three-inch binders filled with hundreds of pages of explanations and supporting documents. At the front was an eight-page “Introductory Legal Discussion,” a prebuttle of sorts, wherein the GPS lawyers laid out their interpretation of the IRS rules and revealed how they would call those rules into question if the decision went against them. That’s an unusual step, but “certainly something that experienced tax practitioners do when they realize that they are likely to have a tough fight on their hands,” said Marcus Owens, a Washington lawyer who’s a former head of the IRS’ exempt organizations division.
GPS then waited, again for more than a year. Delays like this throughout the process would lead the group to criticize the agency’s dithering, saying repeatedly that it had turned the approval process into a “de facto audit.”
Philadelphia Inquirer: So far, super PACs not worth the money
Thomas Fitzgerald
It wasn’t so long ago that the watchdogs of politics barked a warning: Unaccountable “super PACs” funded by the unlimited donations of billionaires and other special interests would warp democracy as we know it in the 2016 presidential election.
So far it turns out the story is a little more complicated.
Consider that the landslide winners of the Republican and Democratic New Hampshire primaries, insurgents Donald Trump and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, had no affiliated super PACs (political action committees) helping them. Indeed, both have made opposition to the corrupting influence of big money part of their populist appeals.”
Bloomberg: How to Give Back $157 Million
Tim Higgins
According to FEC filings, Unintimidated refunded its surplus, about $18 million. “We never had any thought or plan other than that we would return the funds to the donors,” says Chris Ashby, the group’s lawyer. “We felt like that was the right thing to do.” The biggest check went to Diane Hendricks, a billionaire who heads the largest wholesale roofing supply company in the U.S. Hendricks, a longtime Walker backer, gave $5 million to Unintimidated; she got $4 million back.
FEC
New York Times: F.E.C. Tells Sanders Campaign That Some Donors May Have Given Too Much
Nicholas Confessore
Such glitches are common in political campaigns, which are required to track small donors and begin itemizing their contributions when their total reaches $200. That can be harder when donors use slightly different variations of their names or contribute from more than one address. Mr. Sanders’s campaign may choose to refund the excess contributions or re-designate the excess for use in a general election campaign, when candidates can accept another $2,700.
But the F.E.C.’s review suggests that the sheer volume of small contributions Mr. Sanders is receiving — more than 3 million of them so far, according to his campaign — may be straining his campaign’s ability to keep track of which donors are which. Most of the contributions cited by the commission were given by donors with relatively unusual names, whose small checks are generally easier to tally.
Lobbying
Washington Post: DNC rolls back Obama ban on contributions from federal lobbyists
Tom Hamburger and Paul Kane
The Democratic National Committee has rolled back restrictions introduced by presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 that banned donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees.
The decision was viewed with disappointment Friday morning by good government activists who saw it as a step backward in the effort to limit special interest influence in Washington. Some suggested it could provide an advantage to Hillary Clinton’s fundraising efforts.
Koch Brothers
Salon: How the Koch Brothers hijacked the GOP: “I’m not sure they actually could do anything if they wanted to”
Sean McElwee
To gain deeper insights on the Koch Brothers, who have been active in politics for more than three decades, and their network, I interviewed three distinguished political scientists…
Together we discuss the long-term strategy of the Koch Brothers, how the decline of the GOP has strengthened Trump and how to reduce the influence of money in politics…
Does that spending correlate with wins? That is, are the Koch brothers getting a return on their investment? I’m specifically thinking of 2010 and 2014, this has been crippling for the Democrats… B.S.: Well, I mean, it’s hard to say to what extent that matters compared to the simple changes of turnout and redistricting and another kinds of things that were happening at the same times. I hesitate to say that this is all the result of any one given force.
You think there’s evidence that this has had an impact?B.S.: Sure. There are races, marginal races, in which these investments have I’m sure had to play some role in terms of moving a few legislative districts or a few state races that might’ve gone the other way.
Candidates and Campaigns
Investor’s Business Daily: Sanders’ Grass-Roots Success Undercuts ‘Big-Money Rigging’ Claim
Editorial Board
Even after his landslide win in New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders returned to his tired old complaint during Thursday’s Democrat debate that “Our campaign finance system is owned by a small number of people.” Talk about your non sequiturs.
Sanders’ own small-dollar-funded race shows the rich and powerful don’t own campaigns. “Big money interests” are having very little influence on this race on both sides. The big money is behind Hillary Clinton, yet Sanders is ahead of her. So what’s Sanders’ beef?
The States
New York Daily News: Foes of free speech: New York State’s ethics commission adds insult to the injury of a terrible lobbying rule
Editorial Board
While wildly overreaching with a regulation that crimps speech protected by the First Amendment, New York State’s ethics commission is conducting invitation-only seminars on new lobbying protocols with lobbyists.
The Joint Commission on Public Ethics had no room for the public to see how it expects those who pressure government to behave in a state that, amazingly, counts 21 registered lobbyists for every member of the Legislature.
When a member of the Daily News Editorial Board tried to drop by the meeting simply as an interested member of the public, a receptionist barred entry as an invited lobbyist was admitted.
Later, the commission spokesman said the panel conducted the session in a room that was too small for outsiders. Give us a break. Too small for anyone but the insiders?
