In the News
International Business Times: Center For Competitive Politics v. Harris: Will The Supreme Court Hear Case On Nonprofit Donor Anonymity?
Adam Lidgett
The Center for Competitive Politics, a nonprofit based in Alexandria, Virginia, that promotes First Amendment rights, sued Harris, trying to block California from getting the list of its donors, according to the SCOTUSblog. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco sided with Harris, and now the Supreme Court is contemplating whether to step in.
“It’s deeply concerning; 47 other states don’t have this rule. They are able to regulate charities in an appropriate way without having to ask for this information,” Simpson said. Currently, New York and Florida also require nonprofits to provide donor names.
Other states, including Arizona, Michigan and South Carolina, filed briefs in support of the center, saying they are able to prosecute fraud committed by nonprofits without requiring lists of major donors.
Canada Free Press: California wants a full copy of our donor list. Is DC next?
News on the Net True The Vote
The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to conference over the case, Center for Competitive Politics v. Harris, today. In 2014 California Attorney General Kamala Harris tried to compel charitable organizations registered in the state – like TTV – to disclose our entire donor database residing in the state. She’s concerned that donor protections can promote fraud. A lawsuit was quickly filed and now sits on SCOTUS’ doorstep.
Current, longstanding IRS regulations state that donors giving less than a cumulative $5,000 annually to a single 501(c)(3) entity be shielded from public disclosure. If California prevails, the concept will most certainly spread. What can you do in this case? Cross your fingers, say a prayer, do a rain dance and refuse to be silenced.
Independent Groups
Bloomberg: Why Carly Fiorina Has Stalled
Emily Greenhouse
CARLY for America, a super-PAC supporting Fiorina, has managed her ground game, grassroots organizing, and infrastructure to an unusually large extent. By law, the super-PAC and her campaign aren’t supposed to coordinate. The super-PAC’s activities help Fiorina conserve her own campaign dollars, but leaving voter mobilization to an outside group is risky…
Carson may lack political experience like Fiorina, but “he’s got an organization, he’s got offices, he’s got people,” said Iowa-based pollster J. Ann Selzer (who conducts surveys for Bloomberg Politics). “He’s sort of doing the things you do to win a caucus,” she said, whereas Fiorina “doesn’t have the same kind of visibility.”
Washington Post: Inside the abandoned plans of Ted Cruz’s super PACs
Theodore Schleifer
Keep the Promise II, the group funded with $10 million from Houston investor Toby Neugebauer, has not reserved any television time and has no plans to air advertisements until March or April, according to a leader of the super PACs, who requested anonymity to outline internal thinking in detail.
The group was intended to be the main super PAC that purchased television spots, while the other two groups focused on radio and digital advertising. But right after Neugebauer, a controversial figure in some Cruz circles, delivered a PowerPoint presentation to Cruz donors during an exclusive campaign retreat at The Broadmoor resort this summer in Colorado, he abruptly pulled back on a planned major television campaign.
Wisconsin ‘John Doe’
Cato: Policing the Speech Police in Wisconsin
Cato Daily Podcast
More than two years after pre-dawn raids on the homes of political activists in Wisconsin, there is good news for unfettered political speech. Eric O’Keefe was among those under investigation.
Private Giving
Los Angeles Times: Political donation records should have no online expiration date
Editorial Board
Under a proposal before the commission, thousands of online records of behested payments reported by statewide elected officials, state legislators, judges and other public officials could be removed from the commission’s website after just seven years — meaning they might be taken down even before a governor or member of the Legislature left office. Financial disclosure forms, in which officials list their assets, investments and income, would also be removed after seven years…
FPPC officials say they have no intention of removing all data at the seven-year mark; they just want staffers to have the option of doing so without getting prior approval from the commission. But why should that be an option? That information should be available online in perpetuity.
Tax-Financed Campaigns
Cato: Whatever Happened to the Left’s Love of Free Speech?
Roger Pilon
Campus assaults have been so well documented by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) that they need no elaboration here. But the latest campaign finance “reform”—“until the court reverses its decision in Citizens United”—can be found championed in an op-ed in this morning’s Washington Post by such stalwarts of the Left as Yale Law School’s Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayers. On Tuesday last, it seems, Seattle voters approved a measure that would “give” each registered voter a $100 “democracy voucher” that could be spent “for only one purpose—to support their favorite candidates for municipal office.” The city can of course “give” that $100 voucher only if it first “takes” the $100 from its taxpayers, which it will do in all the unequal ways that modern tax systems exhibit. Thus is the political speech of private individuals reduced by forcing the funds they might otherwise direct to candidates of their choice to be redirected through this public funding scheme to candidates they may oppose.
Washington Post: Democracy dollars’ can give every voter a real voice in American politics
Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres
The challenge is to transform Seattle’s approach into a plausible national program. Suppose, for example, that federal legislation provided every registered voter a special credit-card account containing $50 during presidential years, and lesser amounts during off years, funded by tax revenue. Account-holders could send their democracy dollars to a government Web site that would credit the money to their favored candidates and political organizations. About 130 million Americans went to the polls in 2012. If they all spent their democracy dollars, they would have injected about $6.5 billion into the campaigns.
Washington Post: The battle over campaign finance reform is changing. Here’s how.
Amber Philips
Election and campaign finance reform advocates argue Tuesday’s results suggest that local government reform movements have the power to push back against the most powerful forces in politics right now: Billionaires…
THE FIX: So what do these wins mean for your movement?
Silver: You’re seeing this movement emulating gay marriage or gun rights — gay marriage on the left or gun rights on the right — on issues that were getting nowhere with folks in Washington until people said “Let’s take this fight local” and started winning big. And that’s what we’re seeing starting to happen from Tallahassee, Fla., to these three locations this year.
IRS
Forbes: Republicans Want IRS To Target Hillary Clinton
Peter J. Reilly
Given the outrage that Republicans have expressed about the “targetting” of the Tea Party by the IRS, you would think that they would be slow to advocate IRS political targetting. Apparently it is more a matter of who’s ox is being gored.
When the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called for Ben Carson to step out of the Presidential race, he countered by demanding that the IRS immediately revoke its exemption. Then this week Reince Priebus, Chair of the Republican National Committee, wrote to Commissioner Koskinen about a grave matter concerning the Clinton Health Access Initiative.
Candidates and Campaigns
Marketplace.org: Sanders has no super PAC — but he might have something better
Tony Wagner
Throughout his insurgent run for the White House in 2016, Bernie Sanders’ campaign has had an old-fashioned, populist bent: the long-serving congressman is one of the only candidates without a SuperPAC, and he leads the field in donations below $200. Eighty-eight percent of the $40 million he’s raised so far came from small contributions.
But the way he’s raising all that money isn’t quite so old-fashioned. About three-quarters of Sanders’ fundraising from July through September — more than $19 million — came from ActBlue, a nonprofit that makes it easy for left-leaning donors to kick Democratic candidates a few bucks.
Nonprofit Quarterly: Lessig Out of the 2016 Race: Here’s His Next Campaign Finance Reform Job
Rick Cohen
Although he was barely a blip in the polls, the Wally Cox look-alike Harvard professor with the wire-rimmed glasses got some free press during his brief candidacy and is in some circles now much better known as a campaign finance reform advocate than a Harvard professor, Mayday PAC promoter, and referendum presidential candidate. He could leverage his higher public profile—and, presumably, the people his campaign recruited as donors and activists—to put himself to work on behalf of local and statewide campaign finance reform endeavors…
The States
Wisconsin Watchdog: Senate passes GAB overhaul, campaign finance reform in ‘extraordinary’ session
M.D. Kittle
But while it divides the political speech regulator into separate elections and ethics commissions, it does not entirely do away with the GAB model of retired judges presiding over the board.
Republican Sens. Luther Olsen, Sheila Harsdorf, Rob Cowles, Jerry Petrowski, and Howard Marklein, insisted on keeping two retired judges on what would be the Ethics Commission. They threatened to vote against the original version of the bill, approved last month in the Assembly, if they didn’t get their way on the judges.
Legislative insiders said the cold-feet coalition in recent days struggled to defend the necessity of the judges, but after hours of caucusing this week the lawmakers prevailed.
New York Daily News: Legislation introduced to tighten New York City campaign finance rules
Erin Durkin
A package of bills to tighten the city’s campaign finance rules is set to be introduced in the City Council this week.
The legislation would bar more people from giving big bucks to candidates because they do business with the city, and slap more restrictions on fundraising by such donors.
Houston Chronicle: ‘Campaign in a box’ fires up commissioners, consultants
David Saleh Rauf
The Texas Ethics Commission has set its sights on large lump sum payments to consultants from campaigns and political action committees – six-figure totals, on occasion, that are disclosed on campaign finance reports only as “consulting” or “consulting fees.”
Those expenses can be payments for actual consulting services.
However, regulators say they believe campaigns and PACs are increasingly writing big checks to operatives for a wide range of activities to influence elections – hiring boots on the ground, purchasing mailing lists, production costs for ads – and the details are never reported.
