In the News
Daily Caller: When Does A Candidate Become A Candidate
Brad Smith
So “testing the waters,” which doesn’t appear in federal law, is a creation of the FEC to assist potential candidates. It was not intended to subject every person who thinks about running for office to hundreds of pages of FEC rules dictating how a political campaign is run.
CLC wants the FEC to undertake a “fact-based” investigation to determine the moment that Jeb Bush and others became “actual” candidates, or began “testing the waters.” If that approach were the law, there would be no clear rules defining when one crosses the line from thinking about running to actually running, and Governor Bush and other candidates could be subject to criminal penalties for speaking about issues of importance to them, or for helping like-minded candidates raise money.
Washington Post: Super PACs throw lifelines to candidates scrambling for cash
Matea Gold and Phillip Rucker
That heartens David Keating, a conservative activist who brought SpeechNow.org vs. FEC, the federal case that led to the creation of super PACs in 2010.
If it weren’t for their well-funded outside allies, “probably a lot of these candidates wouldn’t be running, and if they were, they wouldn’t be taken seriously,” Keating said. “More choice for voters is better.”
Wilmington News Journal: Delaware election law could head to U.S. Supreme Court
Jon Offredo
Delaware’s Elections Disclosure Act, passed in 2012 and enacted in 2013, requires third-party groups and individuals to disclose their donors to the state elections commissioner if they publish advertisements or other communications that refer to a candidate in an upcoming election.
Previously, only groups that directly advocated for or against a candidate were required to disclose their donors.
The law became the subject of a lawsuit from Delaware Strong Families. The group, which publishes a voter guide, contends that the law is overreaching, compared to federal law, which is limited to broadcast communications, and says it would force them to comply with burdensome regulations that chills the group’s right to free speech.
CCP
Dispute Over Voter Guide Headed to Supreme Court
“We’re disappointed that the 3rd Circuit declined to rehear the Delaware Strong Families case, and we’ll now appeal to the Supreme Court,” said Allen Dickerson, Legal Director for CCP and counsel to Delaware Strong Families (“DSF”).
“The First Amendment does not permit draconian restrictions on non-partisan voter guides that take no position on any candidate,” added David Keating, CCP President.
This case, initially brought before the 2012 elections, focused on the breadth of Delaware’s “electioneering communications” law. Unlike federal law, which is limited to broadcast communications, Delaware’s law goes much further, regulating the incidental mention of a candidate in mailings and on the Internet, even for neutral voter information activities distributed by educational groups. No other state has such a far-reaching law.
Lawrence Lessig
Forbes: Q&A With Lawrence Lessig, The Man Who Wants To Crowdfund His Way To The Presidency
Abigail Tracy
Can you explain your plan and this concept of a “referendum president”? How would your plan circumvent all these issues facing the other democratic candidates currently in the running?
It’s my view that if we had a referendum on this issue with the American public, it would overwhelmingly produce support for the reform. But we don’t have a referendum power, so this is a way to hack on into the system. So a candidate for president says, “I am going to do this one thing and when that thing is over, I will step aside.”
In that process you have a candidate whose election would be a mandate for that one thing and could stand up to Congress and say, here is that one thing and if you don’t do it, you are going to have the wrath of the people who say that you have not respected their mandate. When they do it then we will have created a Congress that is actually free to lead rather than compelled to follow the money.
Independent Groups
Washington Post: Koch brothers to again star as bogeymen in 2016 Democratic ads
James Hohmann and Elise Viebeck
Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars last year on nearly 100 different commercials that similarly linked Republican candidates with Charles and David Koch. Majority Leader Harry Reid, who regularly railed against the brothers on the Senate floor, liked to say that the GOP was “addicted to Koch.” When Reid became the minority leader, some questioned the wisdom of this line of attack.
But leading Democratic strategists insist that correlation is not causation: just because they ran lots of ads tying Republicans to special interests and then lost does not mean it’s an ineffective attack.
Roll Call: Campaign Finance Reform PAC Wants to Be a Player in 2016
Simone Pathe
A new campaign finance reform political action committee expects to be among the top five outside groups to assist campaigns this cycle.
End Citizens United PAC has raised more than $2 million from its online supporters since it formed in March and says it’s on track to raise $25 to $30 million to funnel through a yet-to-be-created independent expenditure arm.
Washington Post: How do you get people focused on the dangers of money in politics? With Money!
Janell Ross
Two political groups concerned about the influence of money on the political process launched a contest Wednesday seeking the most creative way highlight that problem.
The reward? $64,000 in cash, of course…
The goal is, of course, to get people talking about, thinking about and perhaps organizing around campaign finance reform — an issue that habitually ranks low on the list of voter priorities.
IRS
Roll Call: Secret Money Will Continue to Influence Elections Without Clearer IRS Rules
Lisa Gilbert
Everyone and their mother can tell the difference between a nonprofit spending millions of dollars on campaign ads to elect political candidates and a bona fide nonpartisan charity promoting voter engagement. Unfortunately, the Internal Revenue Service’s vague system for identifying political activity prevents it from being like everyone (and their mothers).
And worse, the IRS will continue to be the odd man out, if Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and his Senate colleagues on the judiciary committee get their way. At a committee hearing chaired by Cruz recently, the Republican committee members continued to beat a dead horse about supposed political targeting by the IRS. Rather than drawing hyperbolic analogies to Nixon and Watergate, they should promote solutions to ensure the IRS has clear guidelines for judging whether a nonprofit is abusing the tax code.
Burlington Times-News: Free speech under attack by the IRS
Editorial
According to newly released documents from the Department of Justice and the IRS, in October 2010, representatives from those agencies met to discuss pursuing criminal charges against conservative groups that were said to be “posing” as tax-exempt social welfare organizations.
According to a memo recounting the meeting, revealed through a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, the participants tried to come up with “several possible theories to bring criminal charges under FEC (Federal Election Commission) law.” That is to say, the IRS (and Justice Department), it appears, were not content to merely gum up the works when groups tried to obtain the tax-exempt status; they actually hoped to put the groups’ leaders in jail.
Lobbying
Wall Street Journal: Candidate and Their Lobbyist Pinatas
Joel Jankowsky
Despite lobbying’s constitutional protections, presidential candidates and others reliably decry the influence of lobbyists—even though their number includes many former members of Congress, all of whom have dutifully identified themselves as professional advocates, as required by the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.
Those who vow to impose new restrictions on lobbyists would continue the work undertaken by President Obama in the first six months of his presidency. Denouncing “entrenched lobbyists,” he used a series of executive orders, presidential directives and other actions to systematically impede this entirely legal activity. Mr. Obama’s rhetoric suggested political purity, but the effect was to deny the administration the counsel of people with insight informed by experience.
Candidates and Campaigns
Kansas City Star: McCaskill-Akin tale raising questions in legal, political communities
Dave Helling
Campaign contributions must be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission. And not just money: “anything of value given to influence a Federal election is considered a contribution,” the FEC website says.
There does not appear to be any record in the FEC disclosures from 2011 to 2012 of any contribution, in dollars or in-kind, from McCaskill or her campaign committee to Akin’s campaign.
Was the information from McCaskill’s pollster to the Akin campaign something of “value”? Apparently McCaskill thought so: “I had spent millions,” she writes, “trying to control the outcome of the Republican primary.”
She also said she spent $40,000 on a poll of Republicans.
Huffington Post: John Kasich Has No Idea Where He Stands On Campaign Finance Reform
Igor Bobic
The Ohio governor then pivoted to a more comfortable footing by talking up his record of creating jobs, balancing the budget and the need to restore America’s “leadership” by citing, as Republicans often do, Ronald Reagan. Aside from an unrelated statement of support about term limits, however, he didn’t have much to say about the issue of campaign finance reform.
The closest he came to broaching the subject was when he declared that “sometimes I think these laws can work, but unfortunately I think they work mostly on the margin.”
The States
The Maine Wire: The Liberals’ Hypocritical Dark Money Machine
Nathan Strout
The liberal groups behind the clean elections initiative, like the Maine People’s Alliance, know how to work the system in order to keep donors private, and they’ve been doing it for years. Why, then, would they support a referendum that would reveal those donors? The answer is that the referendum’s reforms are superficial. Let’s review the three major changes that they’re pushing for…
Increase public financing: It’s clear that public financing does not accomplish its goal of keeping money out of politics. Publicly financed candidates take taxpayer money, and then operate PACs to rake in special interest money to boost their campaigns.
San Jose Mercury News: San Jose commission won’t consider dropping councilman’s fine
Ramona Giwargis
The Ethics Commission decided Wednesday that it won’t consider dropping the $10,000 fine issued to newly-elected Councilman Manh Nguyen for late campaign finance filings, despite learning that nearly every candidate since 2014 made the same mistake because of incorrect information from the City Clerk’s Office.
“I am deeply disappointed,” said Chairman Michael Smith following the vote. “I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this.” Smith made a passionate plea to fellow commissioners to drop the penalty against Nguyen, calling it a “gross injustice” to punish one council member and not the others.
