In the News
The Hill: Want sunshine? Buy loudspeakers
Luke Wachob
Few people make a habit of reading government websites. They are far more likely to hear about political scandals or instances of corruption through news coverage, from political or membership organizations they belong to, from social media postings, or in conversations with friends and family. If government can restrict any of that speech, the information revealed through open records laws is robbed of its power to spur change.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what many state legislators and their regulatory allies are trying to do. Ironically, they are co-opting the rhetoric of transparency to do it, proposing that nonprofit groups that criticize candidates be forced to meet the same rigorous reporting requirements imposed on candidates, political parties, and professional political committees.
Supreme Court
ABC News: President Obama to Announce Supreme Court Nominee Today
Jordyn Phelps
President Obama will announce his pick to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia last month.
The president will make the announcement at 11 a.m. in the Rose Garden, he announced in an email early this morning.
“Today, I will announce the person I believe is eminently qualified to sit on the Supreme Court,” the president said in the email.
Politico: Reid wants campaign finance reform to be part of SCOTUS debate
Burgess Everett
Harry Reid plans to introduce his own litmus test into the Supreme Court debate on Wednesday: Campaign finance reform.
In an address at the liberal American for Progress on Wednesday morning, Reid is set to urge Democrats to fight for a court that will take a more a progressive view of the country’s campaign finance system. The death of Justice Antonin Scalia has opened the possibility that the court’s ideological bent could be shifted leftward.
Candidates and Campaigns
CNN: Marco Rubio drops out of presidential campaign after Florida loss
Tal Kopan
Marco Rubio is dropping out of the presidential race after losing the Florida primary to Donald Trump and failing to unite the Republican establishment against the billionaire front-runner.
“We live in a republic and our voters make these decisions,” Rubio said in Miami Tuesday night as his supporters booed Trump’s victory.
His speech was a thinly veiled rebuke of Trump’s campaign tactics, as he warned that it would have been easier for him to exploit the anger and anxiety driving the race. He warned that the politics of division were going to leave America a “fractured nation.”
New York Times: Almost Perfect Night for Hillary Clinton, and a Peek Ahead to the Fall
Nate Cohn
Tuesday night could not have gone much better for Hillary Clinton. The results on the Democratic side moved her closer to winning the nomination. The results on the Republican side pushed the G.O.P. even closer toward nominating a candidate who would be at a serious disadvantage in the general election.
None of this means the primary season will end soon. The Democratic contest could go all the way until the California primary June 7. The Republican contest could last all the way to the convention.
Politico: Trump’s Week of Errors, Exaggerations and Flat-out Falsehoods
Daniel Lippman, Darren Samuelsohn, and Isaac Arnsdorf
“How many times do you think Marco and Ted and all of them were calling their super PAC? Is that right? It’s called life. … They talk to their super PAC. They’re not supposed to but that’s the way life works.” (March 8 in Jupiter, Fla.)
Trump provided no evidence that Rubio and Cruz talk to their super PACs. Candidates coordinating with super PACs is against the law; Trump has not filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission.
Independent Groups
Bloomberg: Stop-Trump Groups Make One Last Bet on Rubio, and Lose
Michael Bender
Three anti-Trump groups—Our Principles, American Future Fund, and Club for Growth Action—funneled millions in television ads to attack Trump in Florida, a decision that left the Republican establishment’s fight against him in Illinois, North Carolina, and Missouri largely to the campaigns and affiliated super-PACs.
The result was devastating. Trump scored his biggest state win of the nomination race so far—collecting all 99 of Florida’s delegates—and Rubio dropped out of the race.
Associated Press: Trump, Sanders deflate super PACS in unpredictable 2016 race
Julie Bykowicz
Across the country, Rubio has benefited from $64 million in spending by Conservative Solutions and a companion nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors. He’s won just three of 27 primary contests.
Rubio’s failure to launch follows that of fellow Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Rick Perry, who also couldn’t leverage millions of dollars in super PAC help. Carly Fiorina ran her entire presidential bid on the back of a $12 million super PAC, but she, too, sputtered out.
Slate: The GOP’s Mounting Trump Panic, in One Super PAC Spending Chart
Chris Kirk
Is this negative spending spree hurting Trump? We’ll know more after Tuesday night’s results, but so far it’s not looking like it. He continues to poll better than his rivals nationally and in several of the states voting Tuesday, Illinois, North Carolina, and Florida. Between Trump’s rise and Jeb Bush’s fail is a cruel irony: In an election season in which candidates from both parties have decried the influence of money in politics, the rich who are pouring their money into super PACs don’t seem to be getting much bang for their buck.
The Hill: Carson super-PAC morphs into VP vehicle
Jonathan Swan
“One of the reasons we called our group ‘The 2016 Committee’ was to give it inordinate flexibility,” Sousa said.
“The 2016 Committee will now kind of morph itself into the objective of having Dr. Carson be Donald Trump’s running mate.”
Sousa says the super-PAC has been in a holding pattern since Carson quit the presidential race, but he is now ready to launch a new campaign — powered by an extensive list of donors — to convince Trump to pick Carson as his running mate.
CPI: Pro-Bernie Sanders super PAC leader charged with fraud
Michael Beckel
Cary Lee Peterson — the creator of a purportedly pro-Bernie Sanders super PAC that collected nearly $50,000 from “James Bond” actor Daniel Craig — was arrested Sunday in San Francisco by the FBI and charged with securities fraud, Department of Justice officials announced.
Peterson “defrauded investors by issuing false filings and press releases touting its purportedly lucrative — but wholly fictitious — business deals,” according to one of the government’s complaints against him.
In all, the U.S. Attorney’s Office criminally charged Peterson with one count of securities fraud and two of false certification.
Influence
New York Times: Measuring Donald Trump’s Mammoth Advantage in Free Media
Nicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish
Mr. Trump earned $400 million worth of free media last month, about what John McCain spent on his entire 2008 presidential campaign. Paul Senatori, mediaQuant’s chief analytics officer, says that Mr. Trump “has no weakness in any of the media segments” — in other words, he is strong in every type of earned media, from television to Twitter.
Over the course of the campaign, he has earned close to $2 billion worth of media attention, about twice the all-in price of the most expensive presidential campaigns in history. It is also twice the estimated $746 million that Hillary Clinton, the next best at earning media, took in. Senator Bernie Sanders has earned more media than any of the Republicans except Mr. Trump.
Washington Post: The media’s $2 billion gift to Trump
Jennifer Rubin
Democrats may find this all amusing, but they should be just as concerned and rethink their fixation with limiting third-party spending. Trump could easily have run as a Democrat, and other media impresarios will come along in the future. Unless Democrats are willing to roll the dice on the media’s willingness to self-police (a poor bet), they should reflect on the Trump lessons as well.
TechCrunch: Google puts presidential campaign finance information and more directly in search
Sarah Perez
The idea behind these efforts, explains Google, is to make it simpler to find information on topics that can still be hard to research with a simple Google Search. However, because Google tends to be users’ first stop when they’re looking to educate themselves on the candidates, Google plays a large role in today’s election cycle.
Of course, it’s critical that Google presents unbiased information so people can draw their own conclusions. To that end, the company worked with data source provider the Center for Responsive Politics to provide searchers with trusted campaign finance information.
This feature is triggered when you perform a search like donald trump or clinton campaign finance, for example, and will highlight what percentage of funds come from which sources, what the top campaign donations are by industry, how much came from SuperPACs and more.
The States
Washington Times: Wolf’s reform plan targets campaign cash, gifts to lawmakers
Marc Levy, Associated Press
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is going to ask Pennsylvania lawmakers to put new limits on the size of individual campaign contributions and to be more transparent about income they receive from outside employment.
The first-term governor also is preparing to seek several other government reforms, including requiring contract seekers to disclose their campaign contributions and expanding an executive-branch gift ban, according to details obtained by The Associated Press.
Arizona Capitol Times: House panel passes bill increasing money in Arizona politics
Ryan Van Velzer, Associated Press
State elections director Eric Spencer said current law is unclear and the secretary of state’s office designed the bill to provide more certainty for politicians.
Senate Bill 1516 passed the House Elections Committee on a 5-2, party-line vote. The Senate passed the bill last week with only Republican support.
Dark money — generally defined as political groups that do not report their donors — is at the center of the debate over the campaign finance proposal that would let such groups double what they spend on ballot measures. It also would let nonprofit groups spend more money influencing elections without having to reveal donors.
