In the News
The Hill: The future of politics and regulation
Paul Jossey
In 1964 the Supreme Court declared “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks…”
The Internet fulfills that commitment in ways the Court could never imagine. And it will continue in ways we presently can’t fathom. That doesn’t mean debate will be rational, respectful, or fair. Online platforms evolve toward market forces; people don’t want polite debating forums. And in free societies, it is they and not government that must make those choices. The FEC should remember that when tempted to fish for online fairness.
Citizen Jeff: Sanders Facing Attack By unPAC USA
Jeff Norman
The notion of limiting what can be spent on influence is preposterous and infeasible in so many ways that the average person, who hasn’t given the issue a lot of thought, is unlikely to grasp. So unPAC USA will gradually create and disseminate easily-digested content in all forms until an extensive, comprehensible and winning argument has been made… My first guest is former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith, who is currently a law professor at Capital University, and Chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics.
Bond Buyer: SEC OKs Pay-to-Play Rules For Muni Advisors; Legal Challenge Possible
Jack Casey
The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved changes to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board Rule G-37 that would prevent non-dealer municipal advisors from engaging in pay-to-pay practices. The approval, announced by the MSRB on Wednesday, raises the possibility of a legal challenge over the rule’s constitutionality…
Despite approval from the SEC, the rule could still face legal challenges from groups that have filed lawsuits against similar rules in the past. The Center for Competitive Politics, the New York Republican State Committee, and the Tennessee Republican Party, urged the SEC in comment letters to disapprove the Rule G-37 changes, warning they would restrict political speech and violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution…
David Keating, the CPP’s president, said the CPP is “very disappointed the SEC did not consider less restrictive alternatives that could avoid limiting First Amendment rights” and that the rule “is highly vulnerable to a challenge in court.”
Independent Groups
The Hill: Big-money liberals vow to back Bernie whether he likes it or not
Jonathan Swan
In interviews over the past several weeks, Democratic donors, fundraisers and operatives told The Hill that the stakes are so high in this election — with Republicans now threatening to take over all three branches of government — that there is no way the left’s donor class will sit on their checkbooks just because Sanders orders them to do so.
“It’s going to cost $1 billion to elect the next president,” says Keith Mestrich, who sits on the board of the left’s most powerful donor network, the Democracy Alliance, and runs the Amalgamated Bank, a top lender to progressive groups and the Democratic Party…
“It might be super-PACs. It might be [501(c)(4)s, social welfare non-profits that can hide identities of donors] … but people are going to figure out ways.”
Bloomberg: The Failure of Money to Buy the Presidential Nomination, in One Chart
Zachary Mider
What’s all that money bought? For Jeb Bush, not much. His super-PAC’s massive expenditures on TV ads have failed to stop a decline in the polls for the Republican nomination. Meanwhile, Donald Trump rocketed to the top by spending relatively little. In part, this was because Trump proved adept at generating free publicity.
We decided to chart the relationship, or lack thereof, between spending and success in the polls. For spending, we compiled Federal Election Commission data on how much each presidential campaign and presidential super-PAC spent through Dec. 31… Then we looked at the change in position in the polls, based on the average poll ranking for each candidate as compiled by Pollster.com.
CBS News: “Hookers for Hillary”: Nevada sex workers back Clinton campaign
Love said 495 of the 540 women who work at Dennis Hof’s legal houses of prostitution will caucus for Clinton. And she’s been offering extra sex for free to men who agree to donate to the Clinton campaign.
“I’ve been enticing people for Hillary, and it works. Before they leave I say, ‘Hey, you’re going to vote for Hillary, right?'” Love said.
KCBS asked Hof if that’s not a violation of some campaign finance law. “I don’t know if this is legal or not, but the girls have great incentives,” he said.
WND: Cruz Super PAC: ‘Trump wins’ South Carolina
Cheryl Chumley
In a somewhat shocking admission, Ted Cruz’s Super PAC “Keep the Promise” president, Kellyanne Conway, said contender Donald Trump, not the senator she actually supports, would take South Carolina in its upcoming primary.
“Trump wins,” she said, in an interview with Breitbart, “but not by the dramatic margins that he got in New Hampshire, not by the dramatic margins that some of these polls show.”
Supreme Court
More Soft Money Hard Law: Justice Scalia and Campaign Finance: A Puzzle
Bob Bauer
In the tributes to Justice Scalia and the immediate appraisals of his life’s work, his campaign finance jurisprudence will come up and the late Justice is described as a formidable foe of regulation. And he certainly could be a hard-charging skeptic, a member of the majority in Citizens United and other cases that blunted the reform movement toward more regulation or undid rules already in place. But it is not the whole story and it misses a question at the center of his jurisprudence that has yet to be clearly answered.
It is well known that Scalia at least relaxed his hostility to regulation within the distinctive domain of disclosure.
FiveThirtyEight: The Supreme Court Fight Probably Won’t Define The Election For Voters
Julia Azari
For starters, research shows that the Supreme Court is a well-respected institution but not very important for most voters. The contemporary classic work on Americans’ political knowledge, “What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters,” reports that few citizens can name more than one Supreme Court justice. A 2012 survey found that two-thirds couldn’t even name one. So most people aren’t paying attention to the court.
Influence
Hollywood Reporter: HBO Prepping Campaign Finance Reform Film From Alexandra Pelosi
Tatiana Siegel
Alexandra Pelosi, a four-time Emmy nominee, is directing, producing and doing the cinematography for the untitled film, which HBO will debut in the fall. There’s no exact air date yet, but the network is eyeing a September slot for the film, which would coincide with the final stretch of the presidential election in November…
Pelosi hails from political royalty as the daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, one of the most powerful Democrats on the national political scene. But the documentarian, who began shooting footage for the film in November 2014, is no stranger to crossing party lines. She previously chronicled the 2000 presidential race for the documentary Journeys With George, which chronicled George W. Bush’s bid for the White House. Pelosi teamed with HBO on that film, which was released in 2002, as well.
The Daily Beast: Is ‘Morning Joe’ Too Close To Donald Trump?
Lloyd Grove
Trump has surely become the media equivalent of crack over the past eight months—nowhere more so than on Morning Joe.
According to data from the media monitoring service TVEyes, the MSNBC program has mentioned Trump’s name more frequently than any other cable show since his June 2015 announcement of candidacy—2,414 times compared to 2,181 on New Day and 1,472 on Fox & Friends; this, despite the fact that MSNBC programs as a whole have mentioned the thatch-roofed billionaire less frequently (9,749 times) than Fox News (10,446) and CNN (16,308).
The Media
Washington Examiner: Media bias bests big money as top voter complaint
Paul Bedard
Media bias is a bigger problem than high dollar donations for 2016 likely voters focused on the presidential election, according to a new national survey.
Rasmussen Reports found that when asked “Which is the bigger problem in politics today,” voters picked media bias over money, 47 percent to 45 percent.
What’s more, the survey found that voters believe that the media has too much power in politics. Some 66 percent said it was too powerful, compared to just 26 percent who said the media wielded just enough influence in the election.
Candidates and Campaigns
Bloomberg: Rubio and Allies Made Big Investment in South Carolina Insiders, Filings Show
Bill Allison
Rubio’s presidential campaign has paid more than $1.1 million to South Carolina operatives and political consultants, more than triple the amount of all his opponents combined, according to a Bloomberg analysis of Federal Election Commission filings for 2015. The next biggest spender was South Carolina front-runner Donald Trump, who paid $256,000 to a political consulting firm owned by his state director, a current member of the state legislature.
It’s a time-honored practice in presidential primaries for campaigns to spread money around early-voting states, and among them, South Carolina stands out. With seven different media markets and tough-to-reach rural areas, insider knowledge is critical.
International Business Times: Bernie Sanders Took Money From Big Lobbying Groups, Returned Corporate PAC Donations
Andrew Perez
As Hillary Clinton faces scrutiny for the campaign donations and speaking fees she received from Wall Street firms, she has sought to direct attention to Sanders’ ties to a national Democratic Party committee that’s received some of its funding from the financial sector and other big businesses. The Sanders campaign has struck back at that comparison, and declared last week that he “has never accepted corporate PAC money in his life.”
Sanders’ congressional campaigns have taken roughly $280,000 from PACs that are not affiliated with a particular company, but do pool money from employees of business cooperatives and professional associations with significant lobbying presences in Washington, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Politico: Bernie’s Army of Coders
Darren Samuelsohn
Hughes, then a 29-year-old father in southern Oregon, didn’t have any connection to the Sanders campaign; in fact, the last presidential candidate he’d been interested in was Ron Paul back in 2012. But he knew how to code and built a page that does a very simple but important job: You click on your location, and it tells you where and when to vote in the Democratic primary or caucus. It launched in June.
Today his site, voteforbernie.org, has landed over 2 million unique views. It’s the top search hit not only for people who want to support Sanders, but for anyone simply googling “how to vote in the primaries.”
The States
KOB4 Albuquerque: Senators credit KOB as they pass campaign finance system reform
Ryan Luby
New Mexico state senators unanimously approved House Bill 105, which would end the guessing game required to accurately track the flow of political money in the state.
The House unanimously approved the measure last week.
Once Governor Susana Martinez signs the bill, the Secretary of State’s office will be required to revamp its campaign finance information system — the central portal that candidates, lobbyists and political action committees use to file campaign reports.
New Mexico In Depth: “Dark Money” disclosure bill dies in final days of session
Trip Jennings
The death notice came a day after the Senate passed the legislation by a 36-0 vote.
“The advocates couldn’t come to agreement. We couldn’t come to agreement with them,” Republican Rep. Jim Smith of Sandia Park, a sponsor of Senate Bill 11, said.
Talks over what should go into the legislation broke down between Common Cause New Mexico and the Secretary of State’s office, Smith said.
Tacoma News Tribune: Washington House passes Citizens United rebuke
Associated Press
The Washington House has passed a resolution calling on Congress to have a constitutional convention addressing concerns with the U.S. Supreme Court decision governing campaign finance that’s known as Citizens United.
Passed 52-46 on Wednesday, House Joint Memorial 4000 said the decision allowed elections to be decided by “those who spend excessively.”
