CCP
Support for Tax-Financed Presidential Campaigns Sinks to New Low
By Luke WachobAmericans just plain don’t like the idea of government funding political campaigns. They either think it’s wrong, or that it doesn’t work.Overby acknowledges the existence of this view, but implies it is a minority opinion, saying only that “some taxpayers didn’t like public financing” even when it was more popular with candidates. In fact, this is the majority view. Polling generally confirms that Americans do not think it is appropriate or worthwhile for government to fund the campaigns of politicians with tax dollars.71% of respondents disagreed with the statement “government should give taxpayer dollars to candidates to pay for their campaigns” in a 2010 survey of over 55,000 representative Americans. Even when the question was reworded with terminology favored by tax-financing advocates, a majority continued to disagree that politicians “should be allowed to use public funds to pay for their campaigns.”
IRS
Wall Street Journal: How Lois Lerner Got a Pass
EditorialIf Americans know anything about the IRS it’s that it accepts no excuses, and so they trudged wearily on Wednesday to pay their taxes. That’s in notable contrast to the free passes that keep flowing to the tax agency’s most famous former employee, Lois Lerner.The Obama Administration’s latest gift to the former IRS tax-exempt chief came recently when U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ron Machen informed the House of Representatives that he would not file charges on its formal contempt citation against Ms. Lerner. This absolution, which shields Ms. Lerner from a grand jury probe, came on Mr. Machen’s final day on the job.
Independent Groups
Wall Street Journal: The Authoritarian Media—II: They favor speech, but not free speech.
By JAMES TARANTOThe Times editors were pleased but not satisfied: “Just issuing corporate statements against such a law is relatively easy and actually doesn’t provide protection against discrimination.” The Times wants corporate America to engage in far broader political activism. For one thing, “corporations and their executives . . . should make clear that they will not donate to or support the campaigns of politicians who back such regressive legislation.” (Actually, campaign donations by corporations are legally prohibited at the federal level.)The editorial adds: “Another thing businesses can do is to make clear that they want lawmakers in all states to pass anti-discrimination protections for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people. More than three dozen chief executives of technology companies did just that in a statement released on [April 1].”“Hypocrisy,” charged HotAir.com’s “Jazz Shaw” who compared this Times editorial with one from January 2010, prompted by the free-speech victory in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
NY Times: Big Money From Super PACs Is Eroding the Power of Parties
By Nate CohnMoney doesn’t buy presidential nominations. At least it hasn’t yet. A candidate who raises the most money, as Phil Gramm did in 1996, can fall flat. A competitive fund-raising effort doesn’t even guarantee competitiveness, as Ron Paul or Rudy Giuliani can attest.Typically, broad support from party elites is a much better predictor of which candidate will win the nomination. Elites not only help raise money, but they also shape public opinion by promoting or playing down candidates on television or to reporters, or offering public endorsements. They form the staff of an effective campaign.Money alone isn’t enough to hand victory to a candidate like Mr. Cruz, whom many party elites view as unelectable and unpresidential. They would rally against him if he ever seemed as if he could win. The Republican primary electorate — which is more moderate than it looks — would probably follow the elites’ lead in such circumstances, though this is as much a judgment about the preferences of Republican primary voters as it is about the power of elites.
Wall Street Journal: Hillary: The Censor
By James TarantoThe expected wealth of Mrs. Clinton’s and her supporters’ campaigns exemplifies how campaign-finance restrictions stack the deck “in favor of those already at the top,” namely incumbents. Obama and Romney might have been close to parity in the campaign-money department, but the president had no primary challenge, which meant he could spend his primary war chest to get a jump on the general election. Mrs. Clinton is not an incumbent, but unless a serious challenge emerges for the Democratic nomination, she will be situated as if she were one.Mrs. Clinton’s most outrageous hypocrisy, however, rests in her call to amend the Constitution to curtail free speech. This has been a popular position on the left since Citizens United. As we noted in September, by that time all but a handful of Senate Democrats had signed on as co-sponsors of a resolution to propose an amendment for near-total repeal of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. In this regard, as in much else, Mrs. Clinton is a follower, not a leader.But she is a follower in a particularly awkward way, for Citizens United was not just about freedom of speech. It was also about Hillary Clinton. Here is Justice Kennedy’s outline of the facts of the case (citations omitted):
Gyrocopter-Based Campaign Finance Advocacy
Washington Post: The man who planned to fly a gyrocopter to the Capitol has a Web site. Here’s what it says.
By Hunter SchwarzHughes hopes the result of the flight is that it will “change the narrative” about voters and the government, and convince every Congressional candidate in 2016 to “take a stand on corruption.”He said that other efforts to reform money in politics lacked media coverage, but also asked those involved in media and politics to not focus on him. “Let’s keep the discussion focused on reform — not me,” he wrote.
Washington Post: Florida Man strikes again, landing a gyrocopter on the Capitol grounds
By Alexandra PetriIt is a truth universally acknowledged that no stunt you do to call attention to the need for campaign finance reform will work.You can write a comic book. You can write op-eds. You can be Stephen Colbert, running for president with a coordinated Super PAC. Nothing moves the needle. As the Tampa Bay Times notes, 96 percent of people think that Something Should Be Done about reducing the influence of money in politics. Only 9 percent think that something can be done. Cynical, but there it is.But Doug Hughes had a dream to change that. He’s a mailman from Ruskin, Fla. And one day it hit him: The reason we have never done anything about campaign finance reform is that no one has ever flown through the no-fly zone to deliver letters to the Capitol grounds in a gyrocopter. That was it. That was the missing piece. The gyrocopter.
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
Wall Street Journal: Clinton Foundation to Keep Foreign Donors
By James V. GrimaldiThe board of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation has decided to continue accepting donations from foreign governments, primarily from six countries, even though Hillary Clinton is running for president, a summary of the new policy to be released Thursday shows.The rules would permit donations from Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the U.K.—countries that support or have supported Clinton Foundation programs on health, poverty and climate change, according to the summary.That means other nations would be prohibited from making large donations to the foundation. But those governments would be allowed to participate in the Clinton Global Initiative, a subsidiary of the foundation where companies, nonprofit groups and government officials work on solutions to global problems.
NY Times: A Snapshot of the Campaign Finance Landscape
By Derek WillisToday is the first major deadline for 2016 presidential campaigns to file their finance reports. Since most of the candidates hadn’t declared before March 31, the end of the last reporting period, much of the focus is on who won’t be filing a report. But thousands of other committees will be reporting donations and spending from the first three months of the year, and here are some of the key points from them…
Wall Street Journal: The Menendez Indictment
EditorialIll-defined federal laws now reach into virtually every sphere of human behavior, and thus prosecutors can destroy almost anyone they choose. The recent indictment of Senator Robert Menendez on 14 counts of corruption and “honest services” fraud is a troubling case in point that deserves more than a little skepticism.Mr. Menendez is accused of doing government favors for his friend Salomon Melgen, a Palm Beach ophthalmologist and Democratic Party benefactor, in return for vacations and campaign cash. Justice’s quid pro quo tale is often sleazy—Brazilian actresses feature prominently—and Mr. Menendez’s conduct won’t enhance the reputation of Congress. But the quids and quos Justice identifies aren’t illegal on their own—and the indictment never gets to the pro part.
Tampa Bay Times: Jeb Bush’s noncampaign campaign honesty problem
By Adam C. SmithIt’s a farce. The former Florida governor is unwilling to call himself a candidate for president or even to acknowledge he is “testing the waters” because to do so would trigger campaign finance law restrictions on how he can raise and spend money. It would limit how how much he can coordinate with leaders of his “Right to Rise” political committee that was expected to pull in at least $100 million by the end of March.Put aside the legitimate questions about how Bush is skirting campaign finance laws – or breaking them, as a number of experts allege.How about that quaint notion that candidates for America’s highest office ought to tell the truth? Does anyone actually believe Jeb Bush has not decided he is running for president?
Ethics
AP: Schock Donor Sues Ex-US Congressman Seeking Reimbursement
By John O’ConnorFormer U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock’s legal problems expanded Wednesday as a contributor sued to force the repayment of millions of campaign dollars, saying he was tricked into believing the young lawmaker who has since resigned amid questions about his spending was “a breath of fresh air” in a corruption-riddled state.The unusual lawsuit filed by Howard Foster, a Chicago lawyer who pitched in just $500 to Schock, cites Illinois’ long history of political and financial shenanigans — from a pre-Civil War governor to former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s recent prison term for misusing campaign funds — and plants Schock among them in claiming his fundraising arm was a corrupt racket.
State and Local
New York –– NY Times: Dean Skelos, New York Senate Leader, and His Son Are Said to Be Focus of Corruption Inquiry
By William K. Rashbaum, Susanne Craig and Thomas KaplanAccording to people familiar with the questions being asked by federal authorities, investigators are seeking to determine whether Senator Skelos exerted any influence in matters involving AbTech. They are also examining whether his son’s hiring as a consultant was part of a scheme in which the senator, in exchange, would take official action that would benefit AbTech or another company, Glenwood Management, a politically influential real estate developer that has had ties to AbTech.Any such action could pose a conflict of interest or potentially violate federal corruption statutes. It is unclear what actions, if any, Senator Skelos has taken in connection to his son’s business dealings, or how they relate to state government; neither man has been accused of wrongdoing.
New York –– AP: NY board gets conflicting prods on closing ‘LLC loophole’
ALBANY, N.Y. — New York’s Board of Elections is getting conflicting prods on whether to close the so-called “LLC loophole” in campaign finance rules ahead of its meeting Thursday.It’s expected to discuss the 1996 decision to treat limited liability companies as people, who can give up to $60,800 to a statewide candidate, not corporations or partnerships that have a $5,000 limit on aggregate donations.
