Free Speech
Wall Street Journal: We’re For Money and Free Speech, Sometimes (LTE)
Mark Holden
Regarding Sens. Charles Schumer, Sheldon Whitehouse and Elizabeth Warren’s letter of Aug. 5: Let’s start with the facts. The senators are wrong when they criticize two recent ads, released by the political-action committee affiliated with my organization, for having “undisclosed” backers. Its funders have been publicly disclosed per federal law. As for the ads themselves, they show a fact-based pattern of politicians and special interests getting ahead at the expense of hardworking Americans.
More important, the senators are overtly antagonistic toward the rights of free speech and free association. They each sponsored and voted for a constitutional amendment that would give Congress unfettered ability to regulate and criminalize speech—silencing their political opponents and gutting the First Amendment.
Independent Groups
Washington Post: GOP donors, fearful of Trump-fueled electoral rout, direct big money down-ballot
Matea Gold and Anu Narayanswamy
He’s in good company. Some of the country’s wealthiest Republican donors are targeting Senate and House races around the country, hoping a financial firewall will protect the party’s congressional majorities on Nov. 8. Their investments — fuel for a record haul by super PACs this year — reflect a fear prevalent throughout the party: that Trump’s contentious candidacy threatens to trigger an electoral rout up and down the ballot.
Those worries spilled into public view Thursday, when a letter signed by more than 75 longtime GOP officials and party veterans asking the Republican National Committee to shift its resources to vulnerable Senate and House candidates was made public.
FEC
Intercept: FEC Commissioner, Citing The Intercept, Calls for Ban on Foreign Money in Politics
John Schwarz and Lee Fang
Federal Election Commission member Ann Ravel on Tuesday proposed a ban on political contributions by domestic subsidiaries of foreign corporations…
Ravel wrote that as a result of Citizens United and subsequent Supreme Court decisions, “our campaign finance system is vulnerable to influence from foreign nationals and foreign corporations through Domestic subsidiaries and affiliates in ways unimaginable a decade ago.”
Influence
Washington Examiner: Five Clinton friends who got special State Department access
Sarah Westwood
Hillary Clinton’s campaign has struggled to explain a batch of previously undisclosed emails that contain fresh evidence of cooperation between the State Department and donors to the Clinton Foundation.
The records, which emerged through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by conservative-leaning Judicial Watch, offered a narrow window into the extent to which friends and donors were afforded consideration and access above what was provided to other outsiders.
Bloomberg: ‘Googlement’ Pushes Aside ‘Government Sachs’
Justin Fox
But there is also a weirdly tight relationship between the company and the Obama administration. Google was formally neutral in 2008 election, but Eric Schmidt, then the chief executive officer, now Alphabet’s executive chairman, hit the campaign trail for Barack Obama and stood at the victor’s side at a news conference the day after the vote. The director of analytics who got the Obama campaign going on its hugely successful experiments in online fundraising in 2007 was a guy on leave from Google.
Since Obama took office in January 2009, at least 250 people have left Google and related companies for jobs in the administration or vice versa. Oh, and in 2012 Schmidt actually helped recruit the Obama campaign technology team and spent election night in the campaign “boiler room” in Chicago.
Candidates and Campaigns
ABC News: How Hillary Clinton Has Spent $82 Million More on Television Ads Than Donald Trump
Ryan Struyk
Clinton and her Super PAC have spent $23 million vs. $2 million from Trump in Florida and $16 million vs. $2 million in Ohio. She’s also spent at least $5 million in Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia — often more than ten times more than what Trump’s allies are spending in the state.
But the data shows what may be a dangerous trajectory for Trump. In recent weeks, Trump’s allies’ spending has dwindled from $2.2 million to only $1.4 million, while Clinton and her Super PAC have more than doubled their spending over the last three weeks from $6.3 million to $12.8 million.
Open Secrets: Trump pulls in historic low in cash from Congress
Ashley Balcerzak
Team Trump received donations from one campaign committee contribution and one leadership PAC.
Longhorn PAC, Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith’s leadership PAC, gave $3,000 to Trump’s campaign and $1,000 to his PAC, Trump Victory. Smith endorsed the Republican nominee last May. The political action committee also gave $2,000 to failed Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker and $5,000 to Ted Cruz. Smith did not return requests for comment.
Trump’s lone campaign committee donation of $292 came from Paul Mitchell, a Republican businessman running for Michigan’s 10th congressional seat and primarily self-financing his campaign. Mitchell said he would respect voters’ wishes and support Trump last May, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The States
Gotham Gazette: For Cuomo, Passing Ethics Bill was Urgent, Signing It is Not
David Howard King
Governor Andrew Cuomo has yet to request the Legislature send him an ethics reform package he personally designed and pushed the Legislature to pass in June with the assistance of a message of necessity he issued, three knowledgeable legislative sources tell Gotham Gazette.
Announced by Cuomo late in the legislative session, the actual bill was then a mystery for days before being introduced in the wee hours of the morning on the final day of the session. Thanks to the governor’s message, the bill was not required to age the otherwise-mandatory three days and legislators passed it within hours despite mostly not being familiar with it…
Cuomo spokesperson Dani Lever told Gotham Gazette, “We plan to call the bill down and sign it in the coming weeks.” Cuomo has already received hundreds of bills from the Legislature since session ended in June.
Tacoma News Tribune: Ventrella promises full-fledged campaign after surprise primary win
Walker Orenstein
The former Seattle-area sportscaster, having dropped out of the U.S. House race in the state’s 8th Congressional District in July, assumed he lost and wasn’t paying attention to the ballot results.
That is, until he got a call from another Democratic candidate in the race, Santiago Ramos, congratulating Ventrella on advancing to November’s general election with Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert…
Now Ventrella says he needs to raise a reasonable amount of money to employ staff, buy yard signs and pay for other basic needs of a campaign, even if he avoids costly things such as television advertisements. He’s just not sure exactly how he’ll go about it yet.
“As far as the money thing: I’m still thinking about how to get around that one,” he said.
Verdict: The Vexing Nature of California’s Attempt to Protect Free Speech Through its Anti-SLAPP Statute
Vikram David Amar
Sometimes when a lawmaking body adopts a new rule that seeks to promote the protection of civil liberties, the effort backfires. That might be happening with a California statute, designed to reduce so-called SLAPP lawsuits—“Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation”—enacted by the state legislature over two decades ago. The anti-SLAPP law (as it is called) was recently invoked by the University of California to try to get rid of a sexual harassment suit brought against it by a woman medical resident at the UC Davis Medical Center. Although the state appellate court (rightly) rejected the UC’s invocation of the statute, the case highlights the potential boomerang effect the statute’s words themselves create…
