In the News

Bloomberg BNA: Disclosure Feud Over Corporate Campaign Money

By Kenneth P. Doyle

Also criticizing the push for disclosure is the nonprofit Center for Competitive Politics, which views campaign finance regulation as an impediment to free speech.

“The CPA-Zicklin Index, and its supporters, are not concerned with good corporate practices,” said a blog post from CCP President Brad Smith, a former Republican FEC commissioner. “They support policies cleverly designed to suppress the speech of businesses.”…

“If the Center for Political Accountability and the Zicklin Center want to speak loudly in support of the policies they prefer, the Center for Competitive Politics fully supports their efforts,” Smith said. “Unfortunately, they’ve chosen to shut down debate by shaming companies into abstaining from supporting the causes they believe in. This shame game is bad for business, but much more importantly, it’s bad for the public who wants and deserves to hear from all sides in policy debates.” 

Washington Post: How 10 mega-donors already helped pour a record $1.1 billion into super PACs

By Matea Gold and Anu Narayanswamy

David Keating, the conservative activist who launched the federal appellate case that created super PACs, said he is not surprised by the size of the contributions flowing to the groups, which can accept unlimited amounts from both individuals and corporations.

And he noted that money is no guarantee of success, pointing out that former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s presidential bid fizzled, despite the backing of a well-funded super PAC.

“I think people have to keep in mind that it’s just speech, it’s just communications,” Keating said. “As we saw earlier in the year with Jeb Bush, spending money on speech doesn’t equal having a candidate you back win an election. You can talk to people, but you can’t make them agree with what you’re talking about. “

“The alternative,” he added, “is the government saying, ‘You can’t do this.’ That to me is a much scarier prospect.”

Free Speech

Concurring Opinions: FAN 126 (First Amendment News) Geoffrey Stone: “Free Speech on Campus: A Challenge of Our Times”

By Ronald K.L. Collins

This issue of First Amendment News reproduces the text of a speech (The Aims of Education Address) Professor Geoffrey Stone delivered at the University of Chicago on September 22nd. The Aims Address is given each year by a member of the University of Chicago faculty to welcome the entering college class. It is delivered in the University’s Rockefeller Chapel…   

Given the controversy over campus speech codes and the University of Chicago’s open letter to its students, I thought the following remarks would help inform reasoned discussion of the issue of free speech on college campuses.

FEC

Washington Examiner: FEC war: Dems reject call to protect Internet news, talk radio from regs

By Paul Bedard

In the latest partisan escalation on the Federal Election Commission, a top Democratic commissioner has ripped a Republican commissioner’s bid to protect books, radio and Internet media from regulation as “pitiful.”

Ann Ravel, a former FEC chairwoman, joined other Democrats at a meeting this month to block Republican Lee Goodman’s proposal to explicitly expand the “press exemption” from regulations to books, satellite radio and Internet-based news media.

In pushing his plan aside, Ravel said that she didn’t have enough time to consider Goodman’s proposal.

Wisconsin John Doe

Center for Media and Democracy: Undisclosed Dark Money Reigns Supreme in Wisconsin Campaigns and Elections

By Mary Bottari

The campaign finance groups in the state, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and Wisconsin Common Cause want to see an investigation of the newly revealed facts pursued: “Recent revelations about the 2011-2012 recall elections have raised troubling new questions about Governor Walker and those who engaged in possible illegal activity. The new information which has come to light merits a full investigation by the Dane County District Attorney,” said Heck on Monday.

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign director Matt Rothschild agreed: “The Guardian story disclosed a lot of new, potential felony violations that need to be investigated and the Dane County District Attorney, Ishmael Ozanne, is the perfect guy to do it,” he told CMD.

Candidates and Campaigns

Paste Magazine: As of Yet, No Talk of Campaign Finance in the General Election Debates

By Walker Bragman

Since the 1976 Supreme Court decision in Buckley v. Valeo, which determined that money is a vehicle for speech, private money has been seeping into our political system at an alarming rate. The more widely known 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC opened the floodgates, and allowed corporations (and unions) dumping unprecedented sums into political races. The court’s position has made enforcement of existing regulations nearly impossible with regulatory agencies unsure of where the bounds of their power lie.

The effect on our political system has been chilling. Bribery is essentially legal.

Perhaps the biggest issue in America right now, the outsized influence of money in politics is the root of our problems. It is the reason there is so much gridlock in Washington-different special interests can stymie legislation that affects their industry.

The Intercept: Mike Pence is wrong; foreigners absolutely can put money into U.S. elections

By Jon Schwarz and Lee Fang

In his debate attack on the Clinton Foundation, Mike Pence accurately noted its contributions from foreign governments.

But then he went on to say that “foreign donors and certainly foreign governments cannot participate in the American political process.”

That’s not quite right.

As The Intercept recently reported, foreign nationals – a term that includes foreign individuals, corporations and governments – can now funnel money into U.S. politics thanks to the 2010 Citizens United decision.

Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Thune, Noem campaigns will keep Wells Fargo donations

By Christopher Doering

Spokespersons for both campaigns said they plan to keep the donations.

“Wells Fargo has thousands of valued employees in South Dakota and their contribution in 2015 was from people like them,” said Joshua Shields, campaign manager for John Thune for U.S. Senate. “We don’t plan to return it.”

Justin Brasell, a spokesman with Noem’s campaign, said the “PAC funds are contributed by individual employees of the company, many of whom are South Dakotans.”

The States

World Net Daily: Government destroys tea-party leader for opposing Obama

By Bob Unruh

A court fight that erupted when state regulators targeted for punishment a businessman because they didn’t like his criticism of President Obama is being submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in the hopes that the First Amendment’s free-speech provision will be affirmed there.

The Nebraska case focuses on the retaliation imposed by state officials: John Munn who then was director of the Nebraska Department of Banking and Finance, assistant director Jack Herstein and adviser Rodney R. Griess. The case was brought on behalf of Robert Bennie, a successful financial adviser who was a leader of the Lincoln, Nebraska, tea party and was quoted in a newspaper describing Obama as a “communist.”…

The state regulators didn’t like Bennie’s speech and pressured his company until he eventually lost his job, the petition states. 

San Francisco Chronicle: Prop. 59 would put Californians on record against Citizens United

By Carolyn Lochhead

California voters are being asked Nov. 8 to push their elected officials to do whatever they can to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision that unleashed a torrent of money into politics by allowing corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on political activity. 

Proposition 59 would have no force of law. Instead, it is a longshot effort to urge Congress to seize back control over election spending by supporting a constitutional amendment to overturn the ruling…

Prop. 59 is part of a national effort by mostly left-leaning activist groups to urge legislators to begin the process of overturning Citizens United. Voters have passed similar ballot measures in Colorado and Montana, and another is before voters this November in Washington state. 

New York Times: Ethics Panel Investigating de Blasio’s Nonprofit Is Said to Issue Broad Subpoena

By William K. Rashbaum

A state ethics panel investigating Mayor Bill de Blasio’s political nonprofit organization has served a sweeping subpoena on City Hall seeking communications among the mayor, his aides, the nonprofit, its donors and consulting firms that worked for it, people with knowledge of the matter said…

At the same time, several lawyers representing donors to the group who have been contacted by the panel said the inquiry also appeared to be focused on whether some donations from lobbyists or their clients who have business before the city actually constituted undisclosed gifts to the mayor. Any such undisclosed gifts would violate state lobbying laws. 

Colorado Independent: Hard-to-trace ‘gray money’ raises the stakes in big Colorado races

By Marianne Goodland

With the election only a month away and mail ballots due out in less than two weeks, “gray money” groups are pouring millions of dollars into Colorado’s most contentious state House and Senate races…

Committees working on behalf of candidates from both parties are far out-raising the campaigns themselves. Even campaigns in the most contested races are raising less than one-tenth the amount that the Super PAC’s are raking in.

The term “Gray money” refers to spending by independent expenditure committees, also known as Super PACs, that are funded by other political action committees. Funding in this way makes it difficult for the public to identify the real donors without tunneling through layers of political action committee disclosures.