Independent Groups
The Hill: Upset Republican donors: Have we wasted our money?
Jonathan Swan
GOP front-runner Donald Trump’s relatively cheap campaign — contrasted with the millions of dollars spent on behalf of Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Scott Walker and Rick Perry — has left donors, fundraisers and conservative leaders questioning the value of super-PACs, which got a boost from the 2010 Supreme Court decision that allowed independent groups to raise unlimited cash.
“People are upset about the Citizens United decision; people are upset about all this money flowing into politics, but at the end of the day it has no impact,” said New York financier Anthony Scaramucci, who was a national finance co-chair for Scott Walker’s presidential campaign before moving to raise funds for Bush when Walker quit the race.
“I mean, with the free media, or whatever the term is, when they allow Trump to go on to every TV station in America — if there’s evidence that PACs are so consequential, please explain it to me,” Scaramucci said.
Washington Post: Money can’t buy Jeb Bush the White House, but it still skews politics
Richard L. Hasen
Bush is simply the latest in a long line of politicians whose candidacies demonstrate that all the money in the world won’t make people buy a bad product. Consider former eBay executive Meg Whitman, who spent $140 million in her bid to beat Jerry Brown in the California governor’s race in 2010. The more she spent, the less voters liked her. Or take Dave Brat, the barely known Virginia college professor who spent less on his successful Republican primary challenge to former House majority leader Eric Cantor than Cantor’s campaign spent on meals at steakhouses. There’s no easy correlation between money spent on politics and electoral outcomes.
Money, nonetheless, does matter to elections. Just 158 out of 120 million American families have donated nearly half the money that’s been spent on the 2016 presidential contest. Bush, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie and other candidates remain viable only because of super-wealthy donors.
Concord Monitor: Rubio must address dark money
Editorial Board
Dark money flows through groups called 501(c)(4) organizations, which are supposed to be nonprofit educational groups. Because of this educational component, the law doesn’t require donors to disclose their identities. According to a Bloomberg View article last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a group connected to GOP strategist Karl Rove have funneled the most dark money into elections so far.
The groups were already a problem in the 2012 election – they dropped more than $300 million on the presidential race that year – but they’re gearing up to play an even bigger role this time.
And Rubio seems to be dark money’s candidate of choice right now.
Watchdog: Political dark money: Much ado about nothing?
Johnny Kampis
Lisa Graves, executive director for left-leaning Center for Media and Democracy, previously told Watchdog.org the left’s motives for hiding its sources of funding is essentially morally superior.
“The question of conservative funders versus liberal funders, I think, is a matter of false equivalency,” she said. “Quite frankly a number of these (corporate donors) like Koch Industries … they’re advancing not just an ideological agenda but an agenda that helps advance the bottom line of their corporate interests. That’s quite a distinct difference from some of the funders in the progressive universe.”
Campaign Contributions
Arizona Daily Star: Which Presidential Candidate Gets the Most Money From Your State?
Palmer Gibbs
InsideGov wanted to find out which presidential candidates are raking in the most dough from each state. Using data from the Federal Election Commission, we looked at each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia and found who raised the most money in each place. We combined candidate committee totals with the money raised by the super PAC(s) supporting each campaign, to provide a full picture of monetary support. (Note: Per the FEC’s data, candidate committee totals reflect contributions of $200 or more. Therefore, candidates might have raised more total money due to contributions under $200.)
FEC
USA Today: Bush-aligned lawyer: Donald Trump’s camp is breaking federal law
Fredreka Schouten
Charles Spies, who represents the pro-Bush Right to Rise super PAC, points out that one of Trump’s corporate lawyers, Michael Cohen, recently told CNN that he would “send a letter very soon on behalf of Mr. Trump” to the person responsible for including a clip of Morocco instead of Mexico in the billionaire’s first campaign ad.
“Cohen is not the campaign’s attorney or paid by the campaign,” Spies wrote. “He is employed solely by the Trump Organization.”
“Trump’s misuse of his company’s corporate employees and resources to defend and aid his political candidacy has rendered the organization and the campaign as virtually indistinguishable entities,” Spies added. “It is remarkable that a candidate fixated on erecting walls refuses to establish any semblance of a wall between his company and his presidential campaign.”
Executive Action
The Blaze: Obama to Move on Another Big Issue ‘Despite Court Cases’ in Final Year
Fred Lucas
President Barack Obama has been criticized often for trying to do an end run around Congress on many issues. In his final year, he might try to do an end run around the Supreme Court.
During a Twitter question-and-answer session Thursday, Obama said that he would move this year to restrict campaign contributions and spending, “despite court cases” such as Citizens United.
This offers a possible glimpse into the “audacious executive action” White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough vowed that the president would take in 2016.
Candidates and Campaigns
New York Times: At Republican Debate, Taunts and Quips as Rivals Battle
Jonathan Martin and Patrick Healy
Mr. Cruz, faced with a question about his failure to disclose a large loan in his 2012 Senate race, attacked The New York Times and called the lack of disclosure “a paperwork error.”
“The entire New York Times attack is that I disclosed that loan on one filing with the United States Senate that was a public filing, but it was not on a second filing with the F.E.C.,” he said, referring to the Federal Election Commission. “Both of those filings were public.”
Mr. Cruz’s bank loan was the focus of a Times article published Wednesday night, which reported that he and his wife had borrowed up to $1 million from Goldman Sachs and Citibank during his 2012 Senate primary race in Texas. Mr. Cruz did not disclose the loans on campaign finance reports, as required by law. During that race, he railed against Wall Street bailouts and the influence of big banks in Washington, a populist, outsider message that is also central to his presidential campaign.
Yahoo News: How Ted Cruz fixes the Goldman Sachs loan scandal
Rick Newman
A lot of candidates take out loans to help fund a campaign. As long as Cruz got his own loans on normal terms—at an interest rate comparable to market rates, with no sweetheart terms—the loans ought to be legit in their own right. The Times characterized the Goldman loan as a “low-interest” deal, but it’s worth pointing out that interest rates in general were at near-record lows back in 2012.
The two bank loans apparently went to the Cruzes personally, rather than to the campaign. That also isn’t unusual. If the loans were administered properly, the banks would have wanted collateral — something a political campaign doesn’t really have. But the Cruzes did have collateral, such as investment accounts and other assets. The Cruzes then loaned the money they got from the banks to the campaign.
Washington Post: Clinton’s attacks produce windfall of campaign cash for Sanders
Karen Tumulty
Sanders’s underdog campaign said it is seeing a surge of contributions as a direct result of the new attention it is getting from the Democratic front-runner, with money coming in at a clip nearly four times the average daily rate reported in the last quarter of 2015.
In its email appeals for money, the campaign accused the Clinton campaign of making “vicious and coordinated attacks” on Sanders’s health-care plan, which calls for a government-run system. Sanders’s strategists are also considering rolling out advertising beyond the early-contest states where it is airing spots now.
USA Today: Hit the road, Jeb
Glenn Reynolds
But there’s another bright spot. Jeb’s trump card was supposed to be the money. He raised a lot of money, and he has spent a lot of money. But it didn’t help. And that undercuts all the money-in-politics talk we’ve been hearing for years…
It turns out that addressing voters’ concerns is more important than slick TV spots. And that means the only campaign finance “reform” we need is for candidates (and donors) to quit tossing money at consultants and instead to speak to the American people about what the American people care about.
If nothing else comes from Jeb’s candidacy, that’s a valuable lesson indeed. Let’s hope that we learn it.
The States
Lincoln Journal Star: Support grows for tightening checks on Nebraska campaign money
Zach Pluhacek
State Sen. Sue Crawford of Bellevue is rallying support from fellow Nebraska lawmakers to ensure her bill to tighten Nebraska’s campaign finance laws is addressed by the Legislature this year.
The measure (LB166) would clamp down on fraud by prohibiting candidates from taking or giving loans from their campaign funds, allowing state regulators to force repayment of money that is misused, and requiring disclosure of year-end bank balances to ensure they match what is reported on campaign statements.
So far, Crawford has secured 29 senators — more than half the Legislature — as cosponsors for the bill, which was introduced last year but has languished in the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee.
St. Louis Public Radio: Missouri House passes first group of ethics bills
Marshall Griffin
The Missouri House fast-tracked four ethics bills and on Thursday passed them on to the Senate, during the first full week of the legislative session.
House Speaker Todd Richardson, R-Poplar Bluff, touted the accomplishment and told reporters that more ethics bills will be moving forward.
“Lobbyists gifts are probably going to be the biggest meat of that (group),” he said. “I’m hopeful that those bills will move out of committee, and hopefully we’ll have them to the floor very soon.”
Event Reminder: CCP-Cato Institute Conference on January 26, 2015: The Past and Future of Buckley v. Valeo
On January 30, 1976, the United States Supreme Court handed down Buckley v. Valeo, still its most important decision at the intersection of campaign finance and the First Amendment. The Court brought forth a per curiam opinion that invalidated significant parts of the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act. The Buckley Court denied Congress the power to limit campaign spending. But not completely. The same Court decided Congress could restrict contributions to candidates to prevent quid pro quo corruption or “the appearance of corruption.” Giving citizens an “equal voice” in elections, however, could not justify suppressing speech.
Buckley remains a vital precedent that restrains and empowers Congress. But should Buckley be considered a First Amendment failure? Or did it embrace inevitable compromises that were both worse and better than everyone desired? How does Buckley affect the law and American politics and campaigning today? Does the decision have a future? Please join us to discuss these essential questions of First Amendment law and politics.
The January 26 event is free of charge and will be held at The Cato Institute at 1000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW in Washington, DC. The program will begin at 9:00 AM and conclude at 12:30 PM with a luncheon to follow. Speakers are still being finalized, but CCP Chairman Bradley A. Smith will be speaking. More information, including an agenda, can be found here. All those interested in attending should RSVP at the following link.
