CCP
Amicus Brief: Holland v. Williams in Opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss
The Colorado system lets a speaker’s ideological opponents wage political battles in the courts rather than in the political arena. It thus tends to chill political speech, potentially frightening individual speakers and small-scale grass roots campaigns away from the political process. And it does so unnecessarily: other states, which use the traditional model of leaving prosecutors (criminal or administrative) with the decision whether to initiate a proceeding, have shown themselves able to enforce their election laws without such a speech-deterring enforcement system.
Independent Groups
Politico: Billionaires fund anti-Trump delegate push
Kenneth P. Vogel
Anti-Trump billionaires are funding ground operations in an increasing number of states to try to ensure the selection of national convention delegates who oppose Trump. The strategy is being executed by the anti-Trump Our Principles PAC, which has a stated goal of blocking the bombastic billionaire from clinching the GOP presidential nomination before the party’s convention in July.
But the PAC’s officials acknowledge that they likely won’t stop there, and that they intend to keep up the pressure all through the end of July’s Republican National Convention, possibly including trying to steer the nomination to an alternative candidate.
FEC
Washington Post: How dark-money donors find accomplices in the government
Editorial Board
If you are wondering how this could possibly be legal, even in the Citizens United era, you are not alone. The Federal Election Commission is supposed to enforce rules that prevent wealthy people from masking their political spending by routing it through straw donors. But the commission has been hopelessly deadlocked, its three Republican commissioners at odds with its three Democratic-voting members, for years. Republicans even blocked investigating three instances of blatant rule-skirting from the 2012 presidential election, including one in which a Mitt Romney associate admitted he donated $1 million to a shadow corporation in order to avoid publicity.
This month, the commission’s three Republicans defended their foot-dragging, arguing that it would be unfair to go after donors in the 2012 cycle, because they did not have enough notice about how the FEC would enforce federal rules after the Citizens United ruling. Though this was a poor reason for ignoring the law, the implication was that the typically toothless panel might more seriously scrutinize dark money sloshing through the system going forward.
SEC
The Hill: SEC ordered to respond to petition for political spending rule
Lydia Wheeler
The nation’s second most powerful court on Monday ordered the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to explain why it has not responded to a request for a political spending rule.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the SEC to respond within the 30 days to a petition the Campaign for Accountability (CfA) filed on behalf of Stephen Silberstein and explain why the agency has not responded to his request for a rule requiring corporations to disclosure their political spending.
CfA, which has long pushed the SEC to issue a corporate political spending rule, petitioned the court in February to force action on Silberstein’s request.
Citizens United
NPR: Citizens United Court Case Was A Fight Against Censorship, Bossie Says
Steve Inskeep
One of many reasons is a court case brought by the man we’ll meet next, David Bossie with Citizens United. Years ago, his advocacy group produced a documentary criticizing Hillary Clinton. This ran against a campaign finance law, which he challenged in the Supreme Court, winning in 2010. The court revised the rules in ways that made it easier for independent groups to spend millions or billions of dollars attacking or supporting candidates. David Bossie helped to reshape our political world. He came into our studios and defended his case as a fight against censorship.
DAVID BOSSIE: I went to bat for Citizens United productions and Citizens United’s ability to do this. But our victory was a good for anyone across the political spectrum, not just conservatives. And of course we didn’t go to the Supreme Court to allow corporations to be able to participate in the political process. It’s an outcome.
BillMoyers.com: What Religion Has to Do With Campaign Finance and Voting Rights
Patrick Carolan and Miles Rapaport
At its core, the real issue here is not just money in politics, but morality in politics. Since Citizens United and McCutcheon, the infamous 2010 and 2014 U.S. Supreme Court cases allowing unlimited and untracked secret money into elections, we have watched with dismay as our system of electing representatives has been corrupted by wealthy special interests; mega-donors, secret groups, and super PACs promoting private gain over public good. These are symptoms – not the sickness. Americans very clearly see that our campaign finance system is no longer honorable or unbiased, but instead is a system that has gradually surrendered any vestiges of a moral compass.
Activism
CNN: Hundreds of ‘Democracy Spring’ protestors arrested at Capitol Hill sit-in
Gregory Krieg
“More than 400 individuals have been arrested for unlawful demonstration activity, and are being processed using mass arrest procedures,” the U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement early Monday evening. Those taken into custody will be charged with “crowding, obstructing and incommoding.”
Beginning on April 2 in Philadelphia, participants in the “Democracy Spring” campaign marched nearly 150 miles south to Washington, where the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) said on Monday that rallies and events have been scheduled through the weekend in an effort to “draw attention to our corrupt campaign finance system and rigged voting laws.”
Candidates and Campaigns
NPR: TV Debates Light On Political Money Talk
Peter Overby
But when it’s time for a TV debate, the candidates aren’t so eager to expound on their fundraising, the big donors they court for superPACs, or the legal rulings that give the wealthy more avenues for giving…
Public Citizen criticizes the debate questioners. In the 21 debates, they asked about political money in 15 of more than 1,000 questions. The analysis found no questions on candidates’ views of the system or ways they would change it.
Washington Post: How far can campaigns go to win support from a Republican delegate?
Matea Gold and Ed O’Keefe
Under regulations established in the 1980s, delegates cannot take money from corporations, labor unions, federal contractors or foreign nationals. But an individual donor is permitted to give a delegate unlimited sums to support his or her efforts to get selected to go to the convention, including money to defray the costs of travel and lodging.
A candidate’s campaign committee can also pay for delegate expenses. Some legal experts believe a campaign could even cover an all-expenses-paid weekend prior to the convention to meet with senior staff at, say, a Trump-owned luxury golf resort in Florida.
Given that the last contested Republican convention was 40 years ago — Gerald Ford vs. Ronald Reagan in 1976 — many of Washington’s top campaign finance experts are furiously paging through old Federal Election Commission opinions, trying to discern what delegates can accept.
Yahoo News: Are Hillary’s big speaking fees being used to help fund her campaign?
Michael Isikoff
Recently filed campaign finance reports may shed light on how Hillary Clinton is using some of the money she collected from her hefty speechmaking fees from Wall Street banks and other special-interest groups: She is plowing an increasingly large amount of her funds, $560,983 as of last month, back into her presidential campaign.
A Yahoo News review of Clinton’s campaign disclosure reports finds that in the weeks after launching her bid for the presidency in April 2015, the former secretary of state paid $278,821 to her campaign to cover so-called testing the waters expenses.
Baltimore Sun: Donna Edwards, Chris Van Hollen battle over trade, NRA in final debate
John Fritze
Using her sharpest rhetoric to date, Rep. Donna F. Edwards of Prince George’s County criticized Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Montgomery County for a 2010 campaign finance law that she said included a carve out for the National Rifle Association. She raised the same issue in her first attack ad, which is running on broadcast television in Baltimore.
“He decided to have a meeting with lobbyists from the National Rifle Association and immediately following that he exempted them from disclosure,” Edwards said at packed debate in Silver Spring, which sits within Van Hollen’s 8th Congressional District. “When he did that, I went to the floor and opposed his disclosure his bill.”
The States
Americans for Tax Reform: Missouri HB 2203 Infringes on Free Speech Rights
Under Sen. Schaefer’s bill, all 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) groups that are run by a candidate, a candidate’s spouse, or those who are employed by or have a contract with the candidate must disclose their donors even if they do not operate within the state. Campaign finance ‘reformers,’ like Sen. Schaefer, hide behind the notion that mandatory disclosure of donors to political causes is vital to transparency in the election process. While they may value transparency, they are undermining political plurality.
These same laws are used to intimidate and harass individuals for their political views. As a result, the amount of people choosing to exercise their rights in the name of political speech are bound to diminish, as businesspeople will have to choose between their wellbeing and their right to express themselves.
Spokane Spokesman-Review: Campaign finance trial delayed, pro-GMO group sanctioned
Jim Camden
Bert Ryan, trial attorney for GMA, said Bill McCleod, the lawyer who gave the group advice on campaign finance laws, was wrong but members of the group had a “good faith belief” that what they were doing was legal.
The association set up a special account, known as the Defense of Brands, into which some of the largest food and beverage companies in the country like Pepsi, Coke, Nestle and General Mills contributed six- and seven-figure amounts. GMA then contributed $11 million to the No on I-522 campaign, so that the association was listed as the source of the money in state campaign finance reports, not the companies that contributed to the account.
Hirsch ruled in March the fund was an effort to conceal the true source of contributions, and violated state disclosure laws.
Albany Times Union: Close LLC loophole for good
Daniel Squadron and Brian Kavanagh
Closing the LLC loophole has been endorsed by good government groups and editorial boards across the state, including the Times Union’s. We’ve carried bills in our respective legislative houses to close the loophole for many years. Last year, the Assembly passed our bill by a wide margin, with broad bipartisan support. The Senate majority used disingenuous interpretations of arcane rules to block the bill from coming to a vote.
