In the News
International Business Times: Court Decides Delaware Donors Must Be Made Public When Campaign Groups Spend Over $500
Mike Brown
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a Delaware law compelling groups that spend more than $500 to reveal donors who contributed $100 or more. Delaware Safe Families (DSF), a nonprofit that distributed an “informational” voter guide in the 2014 election, was previously awarded an injunction to avoid complying with the act by a federal judge…
Chief Judge Theodore McKee, a member of the three-judge panel that reversed the injunction, said the guide focused on specific issues and therefore could not be seen as a simple education tool.
“Otherwise, why not tell voters about the polar bear population? How does the voter guide not fall smack within the definition?” McKee asked in the decision handed down Thursday. “Why can’t I contribute to an organization that wants to obliterate the walrus without disclosing to my neighbors that I don’t like walruses?”
Wisconsin John Doe
Bloomberg: Scott Walker Inquiry Shows the Danger of Secrecy
Megan McArdle
But what possible reason can there be for be for slapping gag orders on people who are accused of … possibly coordinating their issue ads too closely with a governor’s office? And doing so after you have already broken down the doors of their homes with battering rams to collect every scrap of paper or electronics in sight? You can almost hear the prosecutors’ logic: “These suspects’ dangerous allies must not be allowed to find out about the case, lest they smite our great citizenry with white papers and YouTube videos and strongly worded billboards!”
If prosecutors truly thought the investigation needed to be secret, they would have kept it secret — not allowed news of it to leak out. Conveniently in time for Democrats to use it in their campaign materials. This is one of the dangers of making investigations like this secret: Individuals who know of the case have the power to hurt the targets by leaking, but the targets have no ability to publicly defend themselves. That gives prosecutors a perverse power, even when they have weak evidence and a weak case, to elicit guilty pleas from innocent suspects or otherwise do them harm.
Wisconsin State Journal: John Doe ruling fuels call to punish prosecutors
Steven Verburg
The director of a conservative group targeted in the John Doe probe the Wisconsin Supreme Court recently shut down is saying Gov. Scott Walker will be asked to fire the elected district attorney who started the investigation and that lawyers who participated in it should be disbarred.
But a former state Supreme Court justice said such threats are “shocking and outrageous,” and she blamed members of the current court majority with fueling such talk by including overheated rhetoric and “very strange” citations from magazine, newspaper and Internet articles in the ruling announced Thursday.
Wisconsin Radio Network: Watchdog group says John Doe ruling opens ‘floodgates’ for dark money
Andrew Beckett
Jay Heck with Common Cause in Wisconsin says that way of thinking will “effectively end contribution limits” in the state. He argues the decision “really goes further than any, even federal decision, in terms of opening the floodgates of…secret money into Wisconsin and potentially national races.”
For example, Heck says individual contributions in the race for governor are currently capped at $10,000. However, third party groups that engage in issue advocacy have no limits. Based on the Supreme Court ruling, he believes there’s nothing stopping those groups now from working with a candidate they support, as long as their messages don’t use the so-called “magic words” that ask someone to vote for a candidate.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Money talks in state Supreme Court’s John Doe decision
Emily Mills
It’s an advantage to have money — particularly if you have boatloads of it and want to get the right Supreme Court justices elected to shore up your mission.
Anyone paying even nominal attention knew how the state Supreme Court was going to rule on the John Doe investigation of Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign. By a 4-2 vote last week, the court quashed the investigation.
Justices in the majority were the beneficiaries of millions of dollars in support from outside groups named in the investigation they were evaluating. Because of that past support, the special prosecutor in the John Doe case had asked two of them — Michael Gableman and David Prosser — to recuse themselves from the case. They refused.
More Soft Money Hard Law: Campaign Finance and Issue Advocacy: The Fight About Wisconsin
Bob Bauer
This shows how a polarized debate has resulted in energy wasted in debating a politically charged case when there is a serious underlying question worthy of discussion. . The campaign finance laws are criminal statutes. If there is evidence of criminal violations of the law, should the investigation that ensues be conducted any differently because of the nature of the offense? The Wisconsin case, because it is about issue advertising, disturbs critics of the prosecution who see it as an example of a criminal inquiry into speech.
In this respect, the Abrahamson dissent in the Wisconsin case tends to lend support to legitimate concerns about the criminal enforceability of these statues– in particular, provisions governing (potentially) issue advocacy [citation omitted]. The judge makes her case in workmanlike fashion that the statute reaches coordinated issue advocacy. But she also relies on the “spirit of the law”, acknowledges that the statute in question “is not easy to read or understand”, and declares that without extensive judicial construction and gloss, “the fundamental point to remember in deciding campaign finance law cases is that context is key.” This is not the most reassuring architecture for a doctrine of campaign finance regulation that includes criminal penalties.
Contribution Limits
Brookings: The debate over state polarization and campaign finance laws continues
Lee Drutman
In this vein, political scientists Ray LaRaja and Brian Schaffner have claimed that removing limits on party funding activity would make politics less polarized. I’ve been skeptical of this claim. In fact, in a short analysis, I found that the opposite is more likely the case—that states with limits on party fundraising appear to be less polarized, though I cautioned against inferring too much from this pattern…
A lot depends on which states fall into which categories. But, there is a more fundamental question: does it make sense to dichotomize states into “Parties Unlimited” and “Parties Limited” states? States with limits vary considerably. Some states limit the money into parties, but allow unlimited flows to candidates; some states allow unlimited money into parties, but limit money from parties to candidates. Some limits are high, some are low. Some have exceptions for party-building activities. Rules vary between primary and general elections, as well.
Campaign Finance
Huffington Post: The Not-So-Secret Reason Why Women Lack Political Power
Charlotte Hill
To be sure, women have stepped up their contribution game in response to Hillary Clinton’s presidential race; her campaign reported Wednesday that 61% of its donors thus far are women. Unfortunately, we have yet to learn what percentage of the donations themselves came from women – and as we know from research, it’s the size of the donation, not the act of donating itself, that buys political influence. Still, even if every woman in America were to pour her money into Clinton’s race, the fact would remain that men, if they so chose, could overwhelm those donations by sheer fact of their economic dominance. Pending a dramatic change in the gender wealth gap, men still hold the reins on political power.
Candidates and Campaigns
Wall Street Journal: Uber, Burgers and Craigslist: The Lighter Side of Campaign Finance
Presidential candidates filed disclosures with the Federal Election Commission this week revealing their donors and their expenditures in the second quarter of the year. Here are some interesting findings and quirks we unearthed in poring over the records.
Los Angeles Times: California donors have given more to Clinton than all other presidential hopefuls combined
Kurtis Lee and Sahil Chinoy
California donors have provided strong backing to several candidates in the crowded field of Republican presidential hopefuls, although none have come close to the cash pile amassed here by Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina raised significant chunks of their fundraising totals from donors dotting Orange County, the Central Valley and other traditionally Republican areas, according to fundraising reports the campaigns released this week.
Daily Beast: Inside the Mind of a Trump Donor: ‘I Was Probably Drunk’
Olivia Nuzzi
“Why did I do it?” Wallisch said when I asked about his $2,700 check to Trump’s campaign. “I think he would be a very strong leader, and I think that’s what we need now. I have very similar beliefs to Donald Trump. I agree with him on just about everything”…
“Trump just speaks what’s on his mind and I like that,” he said. “I think it’s refreshing. It’s time people say what they felt rather than just what people want to hear.” Wallisch apologized for “getting on my soapbox here,” but admitted it was hard to avoid when talking about Trump. “I like him and I hope he becomes president.”
The States
AL.com: Alabama lawmakers again try to tighten campaign finance law
Mike Cason
The new law authorizes the Ethics Commission to investigate and hold evidentiary hearings on alleged violations of the Fair Campaign Practices Act, just as it does on alleged violations of the ethics law. The commission has subpoena power.
It authorizes the Ethics Commission to order audits of campaign funds. It can investigate complaints about inaccuracies and omissions from campaign finance reports.
And the commission can assess administrative penalties or refer cases to the attorney general or a district attorney.
Bozeman Daily Chronicle: Montana GOP calls Bullock a dark money hypocrite
Troy Carter
The Republicans’ latest criticism is based on the governors association’s affiliation with America Works USA, which ran a $750,000 campaign-style radio, print and TV ad campaign earlier this month to influence a budget battle in Pennsylvania where a Democratic governor faces a veto-override by Republicans and conservative Democrats. According to a report by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the ads target individual Republicans.
America Works USA, like the governors association, does not and is not required to disclose its donors.
