In the News
Bloomberg BNA: D.C. Circuit Judges Wary of Challenge to Campaign Contribution Limits
By Kenneth P. Doyle
A constitutional challenge to per-election limits on campaign contributions faced skeptical questioning from nearly all the judges of the federal appeals court in Washington during a March 29 hearing.
Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit repeatedly asked attorney Allen Dickerson whether a decision in favor of the challengers in the case, known as Holmes v. Federal Election Commission (D.C. Cir., No. 14-05281, argued 3/29/17), could threaten the whole structure of campaign contribution limits, which has been in place for decades at the federal level and in most states…
Defending the current structure of contribution limits was FEC attorney Erin Chlopak, who faced fewer questions than Dickerson from the appellate judges. Chlopak argued that the existing contribution- limit system should be easy for the court to uphold because a series of Supreme Court decisions, including the landmark 1976 case Buckley v. Valeo and other rulings, have consistently upheld the constitutionality of contribution limits.
Center for Individual Freedom: Free Speech and Donor Privacy
David Keating, President of the Center for Competitive Politics, discusses the recent U.S. Supreme Court order in Independence Institute v. FEC, which marked a sad day for the First Amendment and for the right to criticize government, and the dangers invasive disclosure requirements pose to Americans’ First Amendment rights.
Mother Jones: Clean Up on Aisle Trump
Andy Kroll
On paper, McGahn, who is 48, wasn’t an obvious choice for White House counsel. He has never previously worked in a presidential administration, and he has all the attributes of the Washington elites whom Trump has denounced. (One attendee of McGahn’s 2010 wedding says it was like “a convention for election lawyers.”) Trump vowed to get big money out of politics, while McGahn has spent much of his legal career helping candidates and donors stretch the limits of campaign finance laws…
Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell cut a deal in the summer of 2008 to end the FEC’s impasse when they confirmed a slate of new commissioners, McGahn among them. From the beginning, McGahn made clear he felt no kinship with his new employer. “A lot of the staff said, ‘Welcome to the agency. It’s so nice to have you join us,'” recalls Eric Wang, an election lawyer who got to know McGahn while working for another Republican commissioner. “He made a point of saying, ‘I’m not joining you,'” making it clear that he was not there to collaborate with the career agency staff, but rather to serve as a check on them.
Free Speech
Watchdog.org: First Amendment rights still in peril following climate-change probes
By M.D. Kittle
Wednesday marked the one-year anniversary of the day an army of Democratic prosecutors unveiled a coordinated campaign to hunt down so-called “climate change deniers.” Constitutional experts have described the initiative as one of the more egregious attacks on the First Amendment in U.S. history…
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, caught in the crosshairs of the climate change coalition of the willing, marked the anniversary with a combination of celebration and vigilance.
“While pretending that this was a law enforcement investigation, Schneiderman made clear that he was pushing a policy agenda – ‘to defend the climate change progress made under President Obama and to push the next president for even more aggressive action,'” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman in a statement.
“Since then, Schneiderman’s coalition has fallen apart: most of its members have left, the subpoenas served on us and Exxon by Virgin Islands AG Claude Walker were quickly withdrawn, and the climate science debate that this gang tried to shut down is more energetic than ever,” Kazman added.
Supreme Court
New York Times: Gorsuch Supreme Court Nomination Gains More Democratic Support
By Michael S. Schmidt and Noah Weiland
A third Democratic senator announced his support on Sunday for President Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, though Republicans still face the difficult task of gaining enough Democratic votes to confirm Judge Gorsuch without potentially having to change longstanding Senate practice.
The senator, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, is among a group of 10 Democratic senators who represent states that voted for Mr. Trump and who are up for re-election in 2018. So far, two others – Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota – have announced their support for Judge Gorsuch.
That leaves Republicans, who hold 52 seats in the Senate, five Democratic votes short of breaking any filibuster mounted by Democrats. If the Republicans do not have enough votes to break a filibuster, they could invoke the so-called nuclear option, allowing them to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees and hold a floor vote. Judge Gorsuch could then be confirmed by a simple majority.
Mr. Donnelly said in a statement that he would vote for Judge Gorsuch because “he is a qualified jurist who will base his decision on his understanding of the law and is well respected among his peers.”
Congress
Boston Globe: Warren wants another ‘people’s pledge’ barring outside advertising
By Victoria McGrane
Elizabeth Warren doesn’t have an opponent yet in her 2018 re-election bid, but she already has a proposal: Join her in a pledge to keep third-party political groups from dumping buckets of cash into the race.
Warren wants a reprise of the “people’s pledge” she and then-Republican Senator Scott Brown agreed to in 2012.
“The people of Massachusetts should hear directly from the candidates, not from a bunch of shady outside groups that have their own agendas,” Warren said in an interview with the Globe…
Several potential challengers are testing the waters, including major GOP donor and businessman John Kingston and state Representative Geoff Diehl, who was a leader in Trump’s Massachusetts campaign.
Diehl said in an interview that he wouldn’t be inclined to sign the pledge if he decides to get into the race. “This proves what a hypocrite she is. She wants to rig the system” with her head-start in fund-raising, he said…
Warren said she would only make the commitment to shun outside advertising if her opponent agrees as well. “It takes both candidates to make The People’s Pledge work,” she said.
Trump Administration
New York Times: Trump Aides’ Disclosures Reveal Surge in Lucrative Political Work
By Steve Eder, Eric Lipton, and Andrew W. Lehren
Much of the new business has come through “super PACs” and political nonprofit groups whose fund-raising has soared since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. While such groups were once a modest sideline to campaign and lobbying work, the new campaign spending rules have allowed wealthy donors and their entourages to displace campaign managers and party leaders as the leading political power center.
More such business has come from private foundations and ideologically oriented media companies linked to donors like the Mercers, who have invested in websites, documentaries and other endeavors to battle traditional news organizations. They have also formed political advisory operations to steer their giving and promote their influence.
The figures reveal the extent to which private political work has bolstered the financial fortunes of Trump aides, who have made millions of dollars from Republican and other conservative causes in recent years, according to an analysis of the disclosure forms by The New York Times after they were transformed into a computerized database by the Center for Public Integrity.
The States
Albuquerque Journal: Bill would revamp campaign reporting
By Dan Boyd
A bill aimed at reshaping New Mexico’s political spending landscape has caught the attention of several national groups that have been lobbying Gov. Susana Martinez over the last two weeks to veto the legislation.
But backers of the measure, which would increase disclosure requirements on “dark money” groups and modernize definitions in the state’s Campaign Reporting Act, have begun to push back with a lobbying effort of their own – with just one week left until the April 7 bill action deadline…
Groups opposing the legislation argue it would curtail free speech rights and could silence potential donors who could be targeted for supporting controversial political causes…
In response, Common Cause New Mexico, a group that supports the measure and has advocated for its passage, sent a letter to the governor this week citing the recent polls and describing the bill as narrowly focused and on solid legal footing.
Chicago Tribune: Medical marijuana companies now can give to Illinois politicians – but will they?
By Ally Marotti
A federal judge ruled last week that a provision preventing cannabis companies from making campaign contributions in Illinois was unconstitutional…
[A] level playing field is exactly what the lawsuit was fighting for, said Jacob Huebert, a senior attorney at Liberty Justice Center, the Chicago-based nonprofit litigation center representing the plaintiffs in the case that sparked the ruling.
Typically, entities can only be barred from making campaign contributions to “prevent actual or apparent corruption,” Huebert said. There was nothing that pointed to potential corruption in the case of businesses in the cannabis industry, he said.
“They have every right to speak out about politics and participate in it and try to influence the laws just like the rest of us do,” he said…
Chris Stone is CEO of HCI Alternatives, a company that runs two dispensaries downstate, and a veteran lobbyist. He said HCI Alternatives likely will start making contributions in the future.
He said he believes businesses should participate in the political process and support candidates who support their industries.
Missouri Times: New contribution limits affect fundraising quarter ending
By Kaden Quinn
Due to newly implemented campaign contribution laws passed during the November election, fundraising efforts for state candidates adapt to adhere to the new parameters that have been set.
On April 3, 2017, the fundraising quarter for candidates will cease as local government prepares for the 2018 election process. According to the Missouri Ethics Commission, no corporation or labor organization may directly contribute to a candidate’s campaign on a statewide level. The law also limits the amount of money that can be accepted as a donation and how much can be donated.
This has proven to be a complicated shift for campaign committees as they find new ways collect the funds needed to finance their candidate’s election campaign…
While there are some benefits to the new contribution law, at this time they remain more of a problem as details within the law stay vague relating to what’s permissible. With the Missouri Ethics Commission just recently releasing their opinions on it, their implementation of Amendment 2 still shows little signs of clarity.
Maine Sun Journal: Sen. Garrett Mason seeks to end 40-year-old financial disclosure rule
By Steve Collins
Mason, a Lisbon Falls Republican, proposed eliminating a requirement that candidates in the final weeks of a race report contributions of more than $1,000 within 24 hours because it “creates an unnecessary amount of paperwork for campaigns during an already busy season in politics.”
Mason said contributions and spending are already included in mandatory pre- and post-election finance reports…
Mason said, though, that “the final days of a general election are taxing on candidates” and “things sometimes fall through the cracks,” including the required 24-hour report. If they’re not filed on time, he said, candidates will be fined, even if they’re unopposed and their failure doesn’t harm anyone.
Mason called the 24-hour reporting requirement “irrelevant today,” because there are no longer matching funds involved. In addition, he said, the process is both redundant and confusing for new candidates and committees.
