Campaign finance laws often raise difficult questions about the intersection of free speech and elections, but not every case is a tough one. Some laws are just plain dumb and unfair, no matter what your views on campaign finance.
In Holmes v. FEC, my organization, the Center for Competitive Politics, represents plaintiffs who are challenging the timing of contribution limits in federal races, but not the limits themselves. Federal law limits donors to contributing $2,700 to a candidate for the primary election, and another $2,700 for the general election. Many incumbents, however, do not face a primary challenger. They can raise $5,400 per donor and effectively spend it all on the general.
Imagine you are a liberal donor who wants to flip one of your state’s House seats. The Republican incumbent has no primary opponent. His donors can contribute $2,700 before the primary, and $2,700 for the general election — but in reality, the entire $5,400 will go towards defeating the Democratic nominee in November. But Democratic donors can only give $2,700 towards defeating the Republican incumbent. To give more, they have to contribute during the primary, where their money will be spent against other Democrats.
This is not fair to donors, it’s not fair to challengers, and it serves no anti-corruption purpose. As President Barack Obama’s former White House Counsel Bob Bauer writes, “donors do not potentially corrupt candidates in the primary, or the general, or a run-off: the corruption, if it occurs, is the result of the amounts given through the date that the candidate is elected to office.”
Our clients, Laura Holmes and Paul Jost, are like a lot of people: They want to support their party’s challenger, whomever that may be, and don’t want to spend their limited contributions in a party primary. “There is just one election that counts, in November,” says Jost.
Republicans and Democrats tend to disagree about how much regulation of campaign finance is desirable, but we all ought to want laws that make sense. It wouldn’t be hard to make the insensible sensible here. Contribution limits should be apportioned by election cycle, rather than split between the general and the primary. A win for the petitioners in Holmes would make the law simpler and fairer, and that’s something we should all get behind.
This post originally ran in The Washington Examiner on April 10th 2017.
