In the News
Albany Times-Union: Female candidates don’t need handouts
By Luke Wachob
If you saw the rally and didn’t know better, you were probably given the impression that campaign fundraising is keeping women out of high office and that providing tax funds for political campaigns will lessen or solve this problem. If that’s true, nobody told the women of Arizona and Maine, where tax-financed campaigns have been in place since 2000 and the percentage of women in the Legislature has not increased.
On the contrary, according to research by the Center for Competitive Politics, both Arizona and Maine experienced higher percentages of women in the Legislature before implementing tax-financed campaigns. Female representation in Arizona’s Legislature peaked in the 1997-98 session at 37.25 percent. After implementing tax-financed campaigns for the 2000 election cycle, that number sank to 27.80 percent by the 2003-04 session and currently sits at 35.60 percent.
Maine, too, hit its record number of women legislators prior to implementing tax-financed campaigns. Whereas 32.55 percent of Maine’s Legislature was female under privately financed campaigns in 1990-92, only 28.5 percent of Maine’s current tax-financed Legislature is female. In addition to the lack of progress in Arizona and Maine, the tax-financing system most frequently touted by advocates in the Empire State — New York City’s program for City Council candidates — is also dominated by men. Just 15 of NYC’s 51 City Council members, or 29.4 percent, are women.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy: IRS Should Take the Middle Ground on Nonprofit Politicking
By Larry Ottinger
However, there may be room for compromise. One of the nation’s leading conservative election-law experts, Bradley A. Smith, has long suggested limiting such activity to 30 to 35 percent of a group’s budget. Mr. Smith is former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and founder and chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, so his opinion, especially among conservative experts, is influential.
Mr. Smith also proposed a solution for concerns raised by good-government groups: Some stealth political operatives set up social-welfare nonprofits during the heat of a campaign and then shut them down right after, so nobody can catch legal violations until an election is long over, if ever. To prevent that, Mr. Smith suggested prohibiting social-welfare groups from spending money on partisan political activities until their tax-exempt status has been approved, or for at least a year after they apply. The IRS didn’t propose that idea in its rules, but it should have.
The IRS now needs to address the issue of how much political activity is allowable and should let social-welfare groups pursue a small amount of political activity, say 10 percent of a group’s budget or a low dollar limit.
Independent Groups
CPI: Merriam-Webster makes ‘super PAC’ official
By Dave Levinthal
Making good on a promise, language authority Merriam-Webster recently published an entry for “super PAC” in its online unabridged dictionary — a subscription-only product. Inclusion of “super PAC” in its free online dictionary is forthcoming, Associate Editor Kory Stamper told the Center for Public Integrity.
IRS
NY Times: Randolph W. Thrower Dies at 100; Ran I.R.S. Under Nixon
By Paul Vitello
In White House tapes and memos released in later years, Nixon described the situation differently. “May I simply reiterate for the record that I wish Randolph Thrower, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, removed at the earliest feasible opportunity,” he wrote on Jan. 21, 1971, five days before the White House announced that Mr. Thrower was stepping down.
That May, as the administration continued to look for a successor to Mr. Thrower, Nixon made clear what kind of I.R.S. commissioner he wanted. “I want to be sure he is a ruthless son of a bitch,” he was recorded as saying, “that he will do what he is told, that every income tax return I want to see I see” and “that he will go after our enemies and not go after our friends.”
Disclosure
NY Times: In Defense of Anonymous Political Giving
By Thomas B. Edsall
The McIntyre case involved the charge that Margaret McIntyre, an Ohio resident, had violated state law by distributing, at a public forum in Westerville, Ohio, unsigned leaflets she had written in opposition to raising school taxes.
On behalf of the majority in the 7-2 decision, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote: “Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation — and their ideas from suppression — at the hand of an intolerant society.” Continue reading the main story “50 Shades! The Musical” parodies that erotic best seller “Rocky,” the musical, brings songs to a film story Ticket pricing puts “Lion King” atop Broadway’s circle of life Continue reading the main story Advertisement
In N.A.A.C.P. v. Alabama, the court ruled that the demand of the Alabama attorney general for the N.A.A.C.P.’s membership list violated “the right of petitioner’s members to pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate freely with others in doing so as to come within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Huffington Post: Koch Brothers Are Outspent By A Labor Force Millions Of Times Their Size, But…
By Paul Blumenthal and Dave Jamieson
Koch Industries spokesman Rob Tappan called comparisons between Koch and union money “apples-to-oranges” because “Charles Koch and David Koch spend their own money.”
“Unions spend their members’ money, at times against their interests and individual preferences,” Tappan said.
Political spending by labor unions was the subject of a panel at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual Washington gathering of right-wing elites. While celebrating the spread of right-to-work laws that undermine organized labor, anti-tax and anti-union crusader Grover Norquist claimed unions are “the largest political player in American politics and will be for some time.”
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
CPI: Pro-transparency tea party activist trounced
By Michael Beckel
Incumbent Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., easily fended off a primary challenge from David Hale, a tea party activist whose platform included a novel proposal to add more transparency to politicians’ campaign funding.
Had Hale been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, he planned to introduce legislation that would have required members of Congress to clearly display on their websites the corporate logos of the political action committees that helped bankroll their campaigns — like NASCAR drivers display sponsor logos on their cars.
Lobbying and Ethics
More Soft Money Hard Law: Assessing Lobbying Reform in the Obama Administration
By Bob Bauer
The program suggests that I will discuss the Administration’s “successes” and “failure”: success is described in the plural, and failure in the singular, and if this means many successes and only one failure, I am pleased and should probably thank all who are present, end the presentation here, and leave. Or perhaps the suggestion is that despite many successes, it has been overall a failure. But I doubt that many successes can translate into a failure, except for one possible and mistaken point of view, to which I will return later.
State and Local
California –– Sacramento Bee: Highlighting Democratic losses, Republicans block California campaign finance bill
By Jeremy B. White
Republicans on Monday blocked a California campaign finance reform bill that fell one vote short, demonstrating the limits of a diminished Democratic caucus.
Senate Bill 27, by Sen. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, sought to lift the veil on outside campaign spending by compelling nonprofits to identify their donors if contributions hit certain benchmarks, such as when a nonprofit spends more than $50,000 in a given election cycle.
New York –– NCPR: Public campaign financing is in Senate budget; what does it mean?
By Karen DeWitt
The Senate plan does not say how public campaign financing could be paid for. Gov. Cuomo also is not naming a specific dollar amount or funding source, because his plan would not affect races for state offices until 2016.
Opponents, who had long counted on the Senate to oppose the measure, are uneasy. The Business Council’s Ken Pokalsky says a public matching donor system would skew the balance of power toward unions, something supporters deny. And Pokalsky says a public campaign finance system is no guarantee that New York’s long standing ethics issues will be cured.
“You can’t convince us that a small donor match program addresses political corruption or bad acts,” Pokalsky said.
Utah –– NY Times: A Campaign Inquiry in Utah Is the Watchdogs’ Worst Case
By Nicholas Confessore
His campaign strategist, Jason Powers, both established the groups — known as 501(c)(4)s after the section of the federal tax code that governs them — and raked in consulting fees as the cash moved between them. And affidavits filed by the Utah State Bureau of Investigation suggest that Mr. Powers may have falsified tax documents submitted to the Internal Revenue Service.
