In the News
Washington Examiner: Tom Steyer’s failed campaign shows money can’t buy votes
By Luke Wachob
[Billionaire hedge fund manager Tom] Steyer’s campaign strategy focused on two things: spending big and making a splash in South Carolina…
Despite this advertising blitz, Steyer didn’t come close to winning the state. He finished third behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. The billionaire then dropped out of the race, saying he “can’t see a path where I can win the presidency.”
Candidates and observers have debated the role of self-funding candidates throughout the Democratic primary. Those discussions have often centered on the world’s ninth-richest man, Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg’s astronomical spending is truly without precedent, and its final results are yet to be seen.
In many ways, however, Steyer’s campaign offers a better test of the ability of advertising to drive a campaign. Steyer lacks previous political experience and entered the race a far less-known figure than Bloomberg. His poor performance in South Carolina suggests that if your biggest political asset is your net worth, you’re in trouble.
The Courts
Bloomberg Law: Suit Over Trump Hush Money Payments to Playboy Model Tossed
By Peter Hayes
The Federal Elections Commission can’t be forced to investigate alleged campaign finance violations stemming from a former Playboy model’s claim that she was paid $150,000 to remain silent about her relationship with then-candidate Donald Trump, a Washington federal court ruled.
Free Speech for the People hasn’t shown that it suffered an “informational injury” that would give it standing to sue, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said Monday.
Media
Washington Examiner: Covington Catholic teenager to file new lawsuits against New York Times and four other outlets
By Madison Dibble
Attorneys for Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann announced that they were filing lawsuits against five additional media outlets.
Sandmann was accused of harassment after he was photographed sporting a “Make America Great Again” hat while standing in front of a Native American man, Nathan Phillips, with a smirk on his face in Washington, D.C., last year. It was later revealed that the student did nothing inappropriate during the exchange, despite several major newsrooms reporting otherwise.
His attorneys notified the court on Feb. 23 that they intended to file lawsuits against the New York Times, Gannett, ABC, CBS, and Rolling Stone. All of the lawsuits will be formally filed by March 9…
Sandmann has two outstanding lawsuits against the Washington Post and NBC Universal. He already settled one other lawsuit with CNN for an undisclosed sum. The original request from CNN was a $275 million settlement, but it is not clear what the final agreement was.
Independent Groups
The Hill: Pro-Trump group refuses to pull ad featuring Obama despite cease-and-desist letter
By Alicia Cohn
A Republican super PAC is refusing the demand from President Obama’s attorneys to take down an ad featuring his image.
The pro-Trump group maintains that the TV ad, which has been airing in South Carolina, “is a lawful expression of political speech.”
“CDP will not only refuse to take ‘Enough Empty Promises’ down but will distribute this advertisement to an additional 50,000 South Carolina Democratic primary voters,” the Committee to Defend the President wrote in a letter responding to Obama’s cease-and-desist letter.
Law firm Perkins Coie sent the letter to the group last week after an ad featuring excerpts from Obama’s 1995 memoir “Dreams from My Father” began airing in the early primary state.
The ad makes it appear that Obama is criticizing his former vice president, Joe Biden, by taking excerpts out of context.
The Hill: Warren super PAC declines to release list of donors early despite request
By J. Edward Moreno
The super PAC that announced $12 million in Super Tuesday ads for Sen. Elizabeth Warren is declining to disclose its list of donors early, despite a request from Warren…
Warren, who has said in the past that she disavows PAC money in the 2020 primary, has not done so for Persist PAC, which has become the largest super PAC in the Democratic field.
While she has not disavowed the group, Warren’s campaign said she wants the PAC to disclose their donors…
Warren’s campaign website claims she would “disavow any Super PAC formed to support her in the Democratic primary,” though she has argued that she is increasingly at a disadvantage in the race by brushing off support from PACs.
Morning Brew: Google vs. Oracle Sheds Light on Auxiliary Political Groups
By Eliza Carter
In politics, the candidates and legislators you see on the news make up only a small element of a complicated web of corporations, lobbyists, and lawyers that allows the private sector to influence government. One ongoing Big Tech proxy battle shows how companies and interest groups pursue their goals through shady and sometimes downright sneaky methods.
Software giant Oracle’s legal horns have been locked with search giant Google’s for nearly a decade…
Both Silicon Valley heavyweights have funneled money into nonprofits known around the IRS as 501(c)(4)s. Those groups are now supporting their benefactors’ cases…despite positioning themselves as independent interest groups…
The 501(c)(4) label means these groups don’t have to share their donor rosters so long as they don’t spend more than half of their funds on election activities (that’s why some call them “dark money” groups). Yet 501(c)(4)s and other similar, tax-exempt organizations have taken on a growing role in both corporate jousting and electoral politics.
Online Speech Platforms
New York Times: Can YouTube Quiet Its Conspiracy Theorists?
By Jack Nicas
Climate change is a hoax, the Bible predicted President Trump’s election and Elon Musk is a devil worshiper trying to take over the world.
All of these fictions have found life on YouTube, the world’s largest video site, in part because YouTube’s own recommendations steered people their way.
For years it has been a highly effective megaphone for conspiracy theorists, and YouTube, owned and run by Google, has admitted as much. In January 2019, YouTube said it would limit the spread of videos “that could misinform users in harmful ways.”
One year later, YouTube recommends conspiracy theories far less than before. But its progress has been uneven and it continues to advance certain types of fabrications, according to a new study from researchers at University of California, Berkeley.
Brown Political Review: It’s Time to Hold Big Tech Accountable For Political Censorship
By Jack Wolfsohn
For years, conservatives in America have railed against Big Tech companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube, for using vague speech guidelines on their forums as a weapon to ban (and shadowban) their accounts, delete posts and remove followers, and demonetize accounts. Big Tech employees create algorithms that purposefully engage in these actions on a broad scale.
Politicians from both sides of the aisle are debating whether Big Tech companies should be treated as platforms or as publishers. The law views Big Tech giants as platforms, meaning they must permit nearly all speech to be posted on their sites regardless of content. However, the companies consistently fail to adhere to this condition…
The law should be changed so that the companies that decide to restrict speech are legally considered publishers, allowing them to pick and choose their forum’s content and to censor any speech they dislike. Those companies should have special protections that guard them against having their civil liability revoked. However, the special protections should remain for the companies that truly protect free speech of all political persuasions and can prove so in court. It should be up to the courts to decide whether Big Tech companies are acting as platforms or publishers and whether their designation should be changed.
Candidates and Campaigns
Wall Street Journal: All Tom Steyer’s Money
By The Editorial Board
Tom Steyer spent more than $250 million of his own money running for President-enough to buy 6,200 Teslas -before dropping out Saturday after a distant third-place finish in South Carolina. His money didn’t win him a single delegate…
He spent nearly $150 million to boost Democratic candidates during the 2014 and 2018 midterms, perhaps hoping they would someday return the favor…
Mr. Steyer’s presidential campaign never did take off, perhaps because voters want more than a climate activist for the job. His spending did help him qualify for the debates, but he never broke much higher than 3% in national polls…
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren say billionaires are trying to buy the election, and the evil of money in politics is a core progressive belief these days. Perhaps Michael Bloomberg will vindicate their point as he reaches the ballot on Tuesday for the first time, having spent more than $500 million to rise in the polls. But he does also bring 12 years as mayor of New York City as a credential…
Money is crucial in modern politics to deliver a message and inform voters. But Democratic primary voters may be proving that money can’t buy the Presidency.
CNS News: Biden Calls for Allowing Only the Government to Fund House, Senate and Presidential Campaigns
By Staff
Former Vice President Joe Biden wants to amend the U.S. Constitution to prohibit private individuals from using their own money to make a contribution to a federal election campaign or to fund their own federal campaign, according to a plan posted on Biden’s campaign website.
The Biden amendment would need to curtail the First Amendment, which guarantees Americans “the freedom of speech.” In its 2010 decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court affirmed that spending money on a political campaign is a constitutionally protected exercise of that right.
On his campaign website, Biden has published what he calls a “Plan to Guarantee Government Works for the People.”
Part of this plan seeks the constitutional amendment that would prohibit Americans using their own money for political campaigns. The amendment, as Biden describes it, would give the government the sole power to fund federal campaigns.
Politico: Bloomberg’s online tactics test the boundary of disinformation
By Laura Barrón-López
First came the heavily edited video of Democratic candidates looking speechless at a debate when Mike Bloomberg points out he’s the only one of them who’s started a business. That was followed by tweets of fake quotes last week attributed to Bernie Sanders praising dictators.
And shortly before that came news that the Bloomberg campaign was paying social media influencers to hype the billionaire, a novel move by a presidential candidate that was never contemplated by election law.
In isolation, each of the tactics might appear harmless. Lighten up, Bloomberg’s campaign has responded to complaints about the videos and fake quotes – of course it’s tongue in cheek humor intended to make a point. There is no nefarious intent, the campaign said.
“Unlike Donald Trump and the [Republican National Committee], our campaign will not be using disinformation tactics to engage voters,” said Sabrina Singh, a spokesperson for Bloomberg.
But taken together, Bloomberg’s moves are testing the boundary between edgy campaign fare and disinformation, as well as the limits of regulated political advertising, an array of nonpartisan technology experts tracking the 2020 candidates’ online efforts told POLITICO. And it risks leading Democrats into perilous, anything-goes territory in the brave new world of online campaigning, they said.
Atlantic: You Can’t Buy Memes
By Kaitlyn Tiffany
Mike Bloomberg, the Democratic presidential candidate and former New York City mayor, has paid for sponsored Instagram posts on at least 20 major meme accounts in the past two weeks, all with followings in the millions…
Memes spread by imitation and iteration. They need to be remixed and repeated… Bloomberg’s images, in paid-for spots on meme accounts, are not really spreading; apart from a semipopular parody post that mocks the former mayor, there have been no major copy-pastes…
There is, undeniably, something uncomfortable about watching an extraordinarily wealthy person try to purchase organic expression…
Certainly Bloomberg’s Instagram strategy is helping his campaign on some level. Each of the campaign’s posts has hundreds of thousands of likes. The disbelieving comments themselves drive engagement, and bump the post’s position in other users’ feeds. But the ads do not contain any content other than the information that Mike Bloomberg exists and is running for president. “Reach and visibility is not the same as impact,” Varis says. “The message also has to speak to somebody on some level.”
Washington Post: The insidious side of Bloomberg’s ‘deputy digital organizer’ ploy
By Editorial Board
Americans across the country are filling Facebook feeds and smartphone screens with exhortations to back Mike Bloomberg in his effort to become the Democratic nominee. The catch? Many of them are getting paid to do it – whether their audience knows it or not.
Washington Post: Americans oppose political campaigns using their personal data for targeted ads, new poll shows
By Cat Zakrzewski
Most Americans say political campaigns should not be able to target people with digital ads based on their data, according to new polling released this morning.
The research from Gallup and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation reveals most Americans favor greater regulation of ads that are pushed to select groups of people based on personal data such as zip code, age, gender and education…
The polling is a rare measure of public sentiment as candidates pour millions of dollars into microtargeted ads ahead of the 2020 elections. It could ramp up pressure on the Federal Election Commission and Congress to update political ad rules for the digital era.
Washington Examiner: Nevertheless, Elizabeth Warren persists in hypocrisy
By Editorial Board
“People across this country – Republicans, independents, and Democrats – agree that our top priority has to be fighting corruption in Washington,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in an ad broadcast thousands of times in Iowa ahead of the Feb. 3 caucuses. “I’m not doing big-dollar fundraisers. I’m not selling ambassadorships to donors. I’m not cozying up to super PACs.”
For rank-and-file Democrats, who take it as a matter of faith that “corrupt” campaign finance is the root of all evil in U.S. politics, this is a powerful message because recent history has proven that no amount of facts or evidence can dissuade them from this dogma.
They cannot be persuaded by the persistent inability of wealthy Democrats to buy elections, nor by the failure of the best-funded Democratic candidates. They cannot even be persuaded after 2016 when Hillary Clinton’s campaign outspent Donald Trump’s 2-to-1, and pro-Clinton super PACs outspent pro-Trump super PACs 3-to-1.
The Democratic superstition that money buys elections is so powerful that you can see why Warren would spend so much time and money driving it home…
And that makes it an even bigger deal now that she is completely going back on her promise.
Guardian: No, Elizabeth Warren – taking Super Pac money is not girl power
By Arwa Mahdawi
I don’t completely begrudge [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren taking Super Pac money. Her campaign has been flagging; flooding Super Tuesday markets with expensive ad buys is probably her best chance at changing that. However, I do begrudge the highly disingenuous way she framed her Super Pac backtrack as some sort of feminist position. There is nothing remotely feminist about using gender as an excuse to abandon your principles and embrace big money.
Atlantic: The Two Things That Sank Buttigieg’s Candidacy
By Peter Beinart
What [Pete Buttigieg] achieved playing by the Democratic Party’s old fundraising rules was remarkable. Over the course of 2019, Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, outraised Joe Biden, the former vice president, by $15 million.
Once upon a time, that might have been enough…
Buttigieg’s problem was that this old pattern no longer holds. Since 2004, when Howard Dean harnessed grassroots anger at Democratic complicity in the Iraq War to outraise his establishment rivals, populist Democrats have rewritten the fundraising rules. Over the course of 2019, Buttigieg raised about as much money as Bernie Sanders from donors who gave more than $200, but less than half as much from donors giving less than $200. As a result, Sanders didn’t merely outraise Buttigieg by more than $30 million; he and Elizabeth Warren turned Buttigieg’s big-donor support into a political cudgel.
To make matters worse, Buttigieg suffered from another campaign-finance innovation: the rise of the self-funding billionaire.
The States
Associated Press: Legislation advances to allow child care as election expense
By Staff
A bill is advancing in Rhode Island to allow political candidates to use campaign funds for child care while they’re participating in election activities.
The Rhode Island Senate passed the bill last week, sending it to the House Judiciary Committee…
The Rhode Island Board of Elections is considering changing its regulations to include child care as an allowable campaign expense, even if the bill does not pass the General Assembly.
In neighboring Connecticut, Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont has offered legislation this session that would allow candidates who qualify for the state’s Citizens’ Election Fund, the public campaign financing program, to have their child care costs reimbursed by the program when they’re incurred to enable a candidate to campaign.
Woodward News: Numerous bills pass during deadline week
By State Rep. Mike Sanders
Feb. 27 was the date by which all bills had to be passed in committee in order to stay active this session. Consequently, that meant House committees heard hundreds of bills this past week. Here is a look at a few that passed.
House Bills 3826 and 3827 by Speaker Charles McCall would make more transparent and modernize the initiative and referendum petition processes used to place state questions on the ballot in Oklahoma.
HB 3827 addresses a lack of transparency in campaign finance for state questions. The Ethics Commission currently says a state question is only a state question when the governor sets an election date. This allows campaigns for or against state questions to avoid disclosing donations and expenditures until that time. State question campaigns will often have been accepting donations and spending money for months or even years before an election date is set by the governor. This measure specifies that a state question becomes a state question when the Secretary of State assigns a state question number, which typically occurs shortly after the petition is filed.
CalMatters: Legislators’ charity use has prompted calls for reform – but not from the Assembly Speaker
By Laurel Rosenhall
Nothing to see here.
That was the essence of what Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon had to say after fundraising by one member of his house triggered an investigation by California’s political watchdog agency, and payments by another prompted calls to tighten the state’s political ethics law.
As CalMatters reported in its “Sweet Charity” series, nonprofits created by individual lawmakers or special caucuses of lawmakers are an increasingly common way to raise and spend money outside campaign finance law limits.
But Rendon said these affiliated nonprofits “can provide valuable resources” and that he has no problem with them “if people are going about their activities ethically and with full transparency.”
JD Supra: The Annual Roundup of California Anti-SLAPP Appellate Decisions
By Thomas Burke
In 2019, California’s appellate courts issued 42 published opinions interpreting the state’s anti-SLAPP statute. Cal. Civ. Proc. § 425.16 et. seq. Litigants filed at least 435 anti-SLAPP motions in California’s trial courts according to their reporting to the Judicial Council. California’s Supreme Court issued five substantive opinions interpreting the statute while the state’s appellate courts issued nearly 200 unpublished anti-SLAPP opinions. We briefly highlight the past year’s anti-SLAPP rulings for busy anti-SLAPP practitioners.
Enacted in 1992 to protect the exercise of free speech and petitioning activities, California’s anti-SLAPP statute remains the strongest-and most frequently litigated-statutes of its kind in the nation.
