In the News
Chronicle of Philanthropy: Don’t Let the States Trample on the Right to Donor Anonymity
Howard Husock
In 2014, Ms. Harris began asking nonprofits in California not just for IRS Form 990, the informational return available to the public, but also for Form 990B, which includes much more information. Charities are required to use that longer form to tell the IRS about all donors who have given an organization more than $5,000 or who contribute at least 2.5 percent of all donations. Traditionally, that form has gone only to the IRS and has not been public information.
Concern about the policy change in California prompted the Center for Competitive Politics to take Ms. Harris to court…
Should state officials, as the Center for Competitive Politics puts it, be permitted to “demand donor information based upon ‘generalized law-enforcement interests’ without making any specific showing of need”?
Put another way, it is one thing for state officials, having been alerted to the possibility of wrongdoing, to request otherwise confidential records. It’s quite another to maintain files of all donors just in case some reason for suspicion might, at some point, arise.
Daily Caller: Campaign Promises Vs. Reality: Taxpayer Financed Elections Edition
Scott Blackburn
There is little evidence that all this does any good. In states that have tax financing schemes, there is no greater representation of women in state legislatures, there are just as many white lawyers and businessmen elected to office, and there are just as many corrupt and corruptible politicians as before. What such machinations actually produce are merely new forms of influence, dictatorial government bureaucrats on regulatory boards, and less tax revenue in government coffers – not exactly a picturesque utopia.
Daily Caller: The Corrupt Mr. Whitehouse
Paul Jossey
The First Amendment-friendly Center for Competitive Politics filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee alleging the senators had “improperly interfered with administrative proceedings” and “abused the power of their office in an effort to advance their political party’s campaign and electoral objectives.” The charge gave Mr. Whitehouse no pause. This summer he urged the new attorney general to “crack down” on menacing conservative nonprofits with the federal government’s criminal-enforcement arm. Even after the IRS debacle, prosecuting supposed speech violators for what he admits are “ambiguous and permissive rules” remains a high Whitehouse priority.
Independent Groups
Politico: Senate Dems meet to plot 2016 attacks on wealthy Koch brothers
Kenneth Vogel and Burgess Everett
A coalition of deep-pocketed liberal groups ― including a pair of super PACs backing Hillary Clinton ― has been meeting quietly for months, examining the 2016 map and plotting attacks against the powerful Koch brothers’ network.
At midday Thursday, the architect of that effort, Clinton antagonist-turned-enforcer David Brock, is scheduled to present his findings ― complete with the back-up polling and research ― to the Senate Democratic Caucus, sources tell POLITICO…
Beyond the electoral and fundraising components, Democrats say the focus on the Kochs can help generate momentum for campaign finance reform.
“The Koch brothers are symptoms of a bigger problem, and that is Citizens United … free speech means normal folks can get swamped out,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).
Huffington Post: Mitt Romney: ‘We’ve Gotta Rethink Campaign Finance’
Igor Bobic
“We’ve really got a mess in the financial system with regard to campaigns right now,” the 2012 nominee said Wednesday in an interview at The Atlantic’s Washington Ideas Forum.
“We’ve gotta rethink campaign finance,” he added.
The former Massachusetts governor said it is a problem that shadowy super PACs can take “unlimited amounts of money,” while candidates themselves are “very strictly limited” in the amount of funding they are able to raise.
Citizens United
More Soft Money Hard Law: Assigning Responsibility for “Implosion”: the Role of the Court
Bob Bauer
By the time the Roberts majority got to it, the law was shaky and the defense, in McCain-Feingold and before the Court, was a decidedly mixed blessing. One has only to remember the government’s oral arguments in Citizens United. The Deputy SG first suggested that the ban on corporate speech could sustain enforcement action against a corporation’s publication of a book containing “express advocacy”, and then, on re-argument, the SG advised the Court that its office’s answer had changed. It was not fair to place the blame on flawed advocacy, when the original, controversial answer, if imprudent, was a reasonable reading of the statute and perhaps more faithful to its design and logic than the later disavowal.
Fresno Bee: Money, speech and oligarchy in U.S. politics
Thomas Holyoke
What is perhaps most disturbing is that in other ways the court has upheld equality in political participation, such as by enforcing the egalitarian principle of “one person, one vote” when it comes to drawing electoral districts. There is no equality, however, in a society where one person’s voice can be so loud that it drowns out everybody else. The only thing that can match a million-dollar voice is another million-dollar voice, but how different can the interests of two millionaires be? How free and open an exchange of ideas can we have when only they get to speak?
Candidates and Campaigns
New York Times: Bernie Sanders Raises $24 Million, Powered by Online Donations Exceeding Obama’s 2008 Pace
Patrick Healy
Sanders advisers, in announcing the fund-raising tally on Wednesday night, also said that the senator had more than $25 million in cash on hand.
His leading Democratic opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is expected to announce her fund-raising numbers soon. As of June 30, the close of the second quarter, Mrs. Clinton had $28.9 million in cash on hand compared to $12.2 million for Mr. Sanders.
Mrs. Clinton has been raising money far more aggressively than Mr. Sanders, holding 10 times as many events with donors — many of whom contribute the $2,700 maximum to her primary campaign account.
Bloomberg: Ben Carson More Than Keeps Pace, Raising $20 Million in Q3
Phil Mattingly
The staggering haul for a candidate who has never held elected office has come from more than 600,000 donations from more than 350,000 donors—an example of grassroots fundraising reach that has placed his campaign’s finance operation in an enviable position.
Carson’s robust fundraising during the historically slower summer months underscores the appeal of a candidacy that was built with little reliance on the outside groups that have come define much of this campaign cycle’s fundraising operations. Raising the vast majority of his money through his campaign, as opposed to through super political action committees or non-profit groups, gives Carson the type of cushion that former candidates like Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, lacked in the waning days of their respective campaigns.
The Hill: Campaigns fail to excite 2012 big-money donors
Jonathan Swan and Harper Neidig
A number of the most generous donors from the 2012 presidential campaign are sitting on their checkbooks, unsure of which candidate to support after a summer that scorched establishment politicians and gave life to outsiders such as retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Donald Trump.
Republican and Democratic campaign officials and fundraisers are meeting resistance from some major donors who have had their confidence shaken by recent events and are not sufficiently inspired by establishment favorites Hillary Clinton and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
Vice News: Trucker Hats and Pom-Poms: How Selling Swag Is Affecting the 2016 US Elections
Olivia Becker
“The campaign extensively tested premiums (a small merchandise item) in association with a donation,” the report said. “These premiums ranged from mugs to t-shirts to car magnets, and they proved to be very lucrative, according to new media staff.”
Ten-dollar T-shirt sales may not be bankrolling candidates, but they do provide huge value to campaigns due to the fact that swag purchases are counted as individual small-dollar donations.
“There is a certain cache [for a candidate] that comes with showing broad support from a wide group of people rather than relying on large corporations,” Novak said.
Philadelphia Inquirer: So, where did Stephen Colbert’s super PAC money go?
Ashley Parker
We were surprised to hear that no one had followed the money trail. So, Mr. Colbert, we at the Sunlight Foundation would like to accept your challenge.
Sunlight’s senior staff writer Melissa Yeager went step-by-step down the Colbert super PAC money trail to demonstrate how complicated it really is to follow the money under our current campaign-finance system.
