In the News
National Law Journal: Divided D.C Circuit Revives Latest Challenge to Disclosures for Political Ads
Zoe Tillman
The case tests the donor disclosure rules for nonprofits that run ads that aren’t explicitly about a particular campaign. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed a trial judge who tossed the suit.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, said the challenger, nonprofit Independence Institute, distinguished itself enough from other groups, such as Citizens United, that unsuccessfully challenged the disclosure requirement in the past. The appeals court didn’t rule on the merits of the case…
Independence Institute’s lawyer, Allen Dickerson, legal director of the Center for Competitive Politics, said in an email that the institute looked forward to arguing the merits. Overbroad disclosure rules that affect “nonpartisan discussion of issues having nothing to do with an election … inhibit the robust civil society envisioned by the Framers and protected by the First Amendment,” he said.
CCP
“Reformers” Can’t Decide Which Election Money Is Buying
Luke Wachob
It’s as if the pro-regulation crowd is trying to distract from the outcomes of the presidential primaries and the growing public realization that “money doesn’t buy elections” by shouting “look over there!” Problem is, they’re pointing in different directions.
Either money is most effective when it is centralized on very few candidates in a high-profile race, or it is most effective when it is dispersed across many candidates in low-profile state and Congressional races. You can’t have it both ways.
Instead of trying to explain away 2016 when it doesn’t fit the tired narrative, we should learn from it. What we’ve seen this cycle is that money can be an equalizer even when it is unequal. Campaign donations allow Americans to support the candidates of their choice, and gives those candidates a chance to succeed even if they are not darlings of the media and party elites. That’s something to celebrate, not restrict.
Super Tuesday
CNN: Super Tuesday: Clinton, Trump win big; Cruz takes Texas; Rubio scores first win
Stephen Collinson
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton carved out dominant positions in their party nominating races on Super Tuesday, marching ever closer to a scorched-earth general election clash.
Trump swamped his rivals by piling up seven wins across the nation, demonstrating broad appeal for his anti-establishment movement. Clinton also had a strong night, winning seven states and showing her strength with minorities in the South.
“This has been an amazing night,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He vowed to be a “unifier” and to go after Clinton with a singular focus once the GOP race eventually winds up.
Wall Street Journal: Contest Focus Shifts to Florida, Ohio
Beth Reinhard
Donald Trump and Marco Rubio headlined their final Super Tuesday events in Florida, kicking off a battle for the state on March 15 that could tighten Mr. Trump’s grip on the nomination.
Mr. Trump chose his Palm Beach club of Mar-a-Lago for his appearance, while the Florida senator held a rally in a park not far from his West Miami home. Mr. Rubio didn’t mention his failure to win a single primary, setting up Florida as a do-or-die contest for his 2016 campaign. Mr. Trump called him “the big loser of the night.”
Late Tuesday, Mr. Rubio was declared the winner of the Minnesota caucus, his first victory in the race.
Both men laid down markers in the Sunshine State as the Republican presidential race moves from proportional contests to winner-take-all primaries in Florida, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri that may dramatically swing the race.
Independent Groups
Time: Republican Super PACs Aired 6,000 Ads Against Trump Before Super Tuesday
Cady Zuvich
In the final two weeks before Super Tuesday, Republican super PACs coalesced, airing 6,000 ads blasting GOP front-runner Donald Trump, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of new data provided by Kantar Media/CMAG.
The ad blitz, however, may be too little, too late. Trump’s Republican rivals have been slow to attack him and only recently have singled him out on the airwaves.
The Media
RealClearPolitics: What’s Going On With the Republican Race
Sean Trende and David Byler
As political scientists John Sides and Lynn Vavreck noted in their book, “The Gamble,” media coverage plays a huge role in determining who emerges from the pack. So what did we see this summer?
This chart summarizes the total number of minutes CNN dedicated to the coverage of GOP candidates in the last two weeks of August. Note that Trump was doing well in the polls at this point, but was not yet the clear front-runner. Obviously he deserved quite a bit of coverage, especially given some of the things he was saying. But Trump received three times as much coverage as the other candidates combined! If we look only at Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Marco Rubio – the candidates who made it to the late winter – Trump received 12 times as much coverage. Subtract Carson, and we wind up with 64 times as much news coverage for Trump as for Cruz, Kasich and Rubio combined. You get the picture.
Citizens United
Los Angeles Times: I’m responsible for Citizens United. I’m not sorry.
David Bossie
People upset by the repercussions of Citizens United might blame me, or maybe Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion. But they should turn their gaze to filmmaker Michael Moore. In June 2004 — a presidential election year — he released “Fahrenheit 9/11.” That documentary — produced and promoted with corporate money — made a tremendous impact in the run-up to election day. TV was filled with ads for the film, which made President George W. Bush look ridiculous in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That inspired me to produce conservative films.
But when I made “Hillary: The Movie” in 2008, the Federal Election Commission argued that, unlike Moore’s film, it was a form of “electioneering” and that I couldn’t show it during an election season— the very time that free speech matters most. Under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws, the government could actually have thrown me in jail for showing “Hillary: The Movie” or its promotional ads on television…
Under that kind of broad interpretation of the law, Michael Bay’s “13 Hours” about the debacle in Benghazi, Libya, or Johnny Depp’s “Funny or Die Presents Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal: The Movie” also could have been challenged for violating corporate political spending during an election season.
The Courts
Washington Post: How Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption case could change the way members of Congress do business
Amber Phillips
Three federal appellate court judges will be hearing arguments from both sides about something much broader than the two friends’ alleged quid pro quo. The judges will be considering whether the executive branch, in the form of the Justice Department, overstepped its constitutional bounds by investigating and charging Menendez in the first place.
Menendez’s lawyers are arguing that the senator was doing official legislative business in advancing his constituent’s interests in Washington, and the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause prevents lawmakers’ legislative acts from being scrutinized by the other two branches of government — except for “Treason, Felony and Breach of Peace.” Menendez was engaged in none of that, they say, and they’re asking the judges to throw out at least some of the dozen or so counts of bribery and corruption on the claim that federal prosecutors unconstitutionally investigated Menendez.
Political Parties
Observer: How the DNC Shielded Clinton From the Same Fate as Jeb Bush
Michael Sainato
In this election year, Ms. Clinton made sure there would be no John Edwards or any other Establishment Democrat competing for support. Unlike the extensive debate schedule of 2008, the co-chair of Ms. Clinton’s ’08 campaign and current DNC Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, ensured only a few debates for the 2016 race would occur—and she scheduled them for wildly inconvenient times. Emails were released showing Clinton staffers blackmailing journalists for coverage, while Ms. Clinton herself is notorious for avoiding the press altogether. Her super PAC, the Hillary Victory Fund, raises money on her behalf, gives the DNC a cut and then doles the rest out to State Democratic parties of Ms. Clinton’s choosing. Nearly every Democrat in office has endorsed Ms. Clinton, and most of those who have not are remaining neutral in lieu of risking retribution.
FEC
Santa Fe New Mexican: Udall calls to overhaul political campaign watchdog
Andrew Oxford
U.S. Sen. Tom Udall announced legislation to replace the federal government’s political campaign watchdog.
“Congress created the Federal Election Commission to fight political corruption after Watergate,” the New Mexico Democrat said in a news release. “But today, partisan gridlock leaves the agency powerless to enforce the few campaign finance laws remaining on the books.”…
“This is sort of like Groundhog Day. You wake up and there’s another proposal to reform the FEC,” said Michael E. Toner , a Republican who served on the commission from 2002 to 2007, and was its chairman in 2006. He is now a lawyer specializing in election and lobbying laws.
Toner argued that cutting the commission to five members would give control to one political party, which he said is what Congress sought to avoid when the commission was established after the Watergate scandal.
Candidates and Campaigns
Daily Caller: Open Letter to Liberals: On Campaign Finance Reform, You Have Fewer Friends Than You Think
Shaun McCutcheon
Isn’t there a massive intellectual contradiction when liberals like Sanders lend their support to anything that looks, feels, or smells like campaign finance regulation? Absent such reform, the Sanders campaign (like Obama’s before) is not just doing well; it is actually creating a forum in which all voters can participate directly and effectively. It’s called democracy and your money makes it possible – money that can be contributed painlessly by most voters, regardless of their relative economic situation…
Yes, it is money that makes grassroots democracy, or any other kind of democracy, possible. It is money that enables underdogs to compete and get their message out. It is money that binds loyalties; that turns political dilettantes into impassioned, engaged participants with a real stake in the discussion and the outcome. It’s the kind of democracy that at least one semi-liberal named Jefferson had in mind some years ago.
The Atlantic: Bernie Sanders’s Big Money
Clare Foran
Sanders’s campaign proves that it is possible to mount a competitive presidential bid without relying on super PACs. That alone could encourage candidates without deep ties to the political establishment to run for office. The success of the campaign’s fundraising strategy shows that it is possible to challenge the status quo simply by refusing to give in to it. Still, it is ironic that a campaign built around the idea of getting big money out of politics has infused so much money into the political process. To some extent, the political establishment is taking Sanders seriously precisely because he has raised so much money, a metric that risks reinforcing conventional wisdom that only candidates capable of marshaling significant sums deserve mainstream attention. The campaign’s towering fundraising benchmarks could also inadvertently set the bar higher for future insurgent campaigns looking to compete in presidential elections.
Slate: Folks Before Kochs
Reihan Salam
More than anything else, Trump has demonstrated that white working-class voters have minds of their own. They will not simply line up behind the candidates selected for them by hedge-funders and industrialists during the “invisible primary.” If we define working-class voters as those without a college degree, Ronald Brownstein of the Atlantic estimates that this bloc represents 53 percent of Republicans, split almost evenly between those who are conservative Christians and those who are not. The Pew Research Center reports that in 2012, 53 percent of Republicans were part of families that earned less than $75,000 a year. These groups, which tend to overlap, are Donald Trump’s base. Ever since the Nixon era, Republicans have relied on the white working class to achieve political victories. Now, it has revolted against the GOP elite.
The States
KTVQ Billings: Motl and Wittich spar over vital evidence before campaign-violation trial
Mike Dennison
As Montana’s top campaign cop and one of his biggest targets prepare for a crucial trial on alleged campaign violations, they’re trading bitter charges over evidence and tactics likely to influence the outcome.
State Rep. Art Wittich, a Bozeman Republican accused of accepting illegal corporate contributions and illegally coordinating his 2010 campaign with outside groups, says Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl destroyed email evidence from a former colleague who claims Motl had vowed to get Wittich “and people like him.”
Wittich says the judge should dismiss all charges against him, to penalize Motl for “spoliation” of evidence – or, at the least, bar Motl from testifying at the civil trial scheduled later this month.
