CCP
Did Lessig Fudge the Numbers?
Brad Smith
Last summer, Harvard Professor Larry Lessig said he would run for president if he raised $1 million by Labor Day. He didn’t, as Lachlan Markay reported in The Washington Free Beacon. “Raised,” at least in my experience, means what you actually brought in, not promises or pledges to give…
I tweeted around a link to Markay’s story, finding it interesting. Lessig, apparently, did not, complaining that “It is the nature of truth these days to be viewed through a partisan lens.” Seeking a non-partisan analysis, Lessig invited me to review, not his receipts, but his own promise. He said: “as many news outlets reported at the time, our goal was to raise $1M in crowdfunding pledges —including amounts paid immediately and amounts pledged in advance — by September 7.”
Though claiming I am his “regular critic,” Lessig complimented me: “I’d trust him to report the truth accurately.” I appreciate Larry’s compliment. I am happy to give that sort of non-partisan analysis, and I will do my best not to view this through a “partisan lens.”
I’ve watched all the videos I can find of Lessig making his announcement, and he never specifically addresses the question. It’s certainly possible I’ve missed some. I also went through every link on the first two pages of results for a Google search of “Larry Lessig million labor day.” Not one media report I reviewed says a word about “pledges.” Not one. So if “many news outlets” reported that, it doesn’t seem to include the most prominent and obvious ones. I can’t even find Lessig media releases that say that.
In Memoriam
Fred Thompson, former senator and actor, dies at 73
Lucas L. Johnson II
Thompson, at 6-foot-6 with a booming voice, appeared in at least 20 motion pictures. His credits include “In the Line of Fire,” “The Hunt for Red October,” “Die Hard II” and “Cape Fear.”
By the early 1990s, Thompson said he had become bored with his 10-year stint in Hollywood and wanted to go into public service. That’s when he headed back to Nashville and launched his Senate campaign. A man of many roles in life and on the screen, he was a lawyer by training and also once served as a chief minority counsel during the Senate Watergate hearings.
Independent Groups
Politico: Cruz’s silent super PACs a growing worry for campaign
Shane Goldmacher
The super PACs backing Cruz’s presidential run have yet to reserve any TV time in the early primary states – or anywhere else – despite a combined $38 million warchest that ranks second only to Jeb Bush’s $103 million operation.
The total absence of ads has created confusion and growing consternation inside the Cruz campaign, which cannot legally communicate with its allied super PACs and has had to watch as their rivals lock in tens of millions of dollars in ads before prices spike, as they typically do as elections near.
“I assume they’re waiting so their media buyers make the highest commission,” one Cruz adviser quipped.
Huffington Post: Your State And Local Elections Are Now A Super PAC Playground
Paul Blumenthal
Super PACs and nonprofits — in some cases connected to a single candidate — have taken on a dominant role in many of these elections. Super PAC spending on state and local elections often has more of a direct influence on government than spending on the more talked-about 2016 presidential election. In many cases, donations to these unlimited money groups come from developers, contractors and special interest groups looking to gain special favors from their local government.
“When you look at smaller races, the relative importance of outside spending increases, both in terms of outcome of election and influencing policy,” said Rick Hasen, a University of California, Irvine law professor and author of the forthcoming Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections.
Tax Financed Campaigns
More Soft Money Hard Law: The Public Financing Question
Bob Bauer
Proposals designed to serve these various proposals will be politically controversial. As Edsall notes about the example he reviews, they are also complex. A well-designed public financing system is necessarily intricate. Complexity increases the odds of unintended consequences, and it is an administrative challenge that can lead to major frustrations over the quality and competence of implementation. Candidates, political parties and others operating within the system invariably test its limits under the pressures of competition. Regulators respond, compounding the complexity. The courts become quickly involved in the fight over how much authority the government has to make all this work.
Wall Street Journal: Voters Weigh Taxes, Wages and Legalizing Pot
Jacob Gershman and Mark Peters
Voters in Maine are deciding whether to expand the state’s public campaign-financing system by requiring the state to put an additional $1 million into a fund for participating state candidates and pay for the increase by eliminating corporate tax breaks. The so-called “Clean Elections” initiative would also increase penalties for campaign-finance violations. The idea, whose supporters say would create a fairer electoral process, was denounced by the state’s Republican governor, Paul LePage, who has called taxpayer-funded political campaigns “welfare for politicians” and a “scam.”
Supreme Court
National Law Journal: Justice Kennedy, Heed Justice Kennedy: Money Buys Influence
Rick Hasen
Many people know of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s controversial 2010 Supreme Court opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which he assured the American people that independent spending in elections cannot corrupt or create the appearance of corruption, and that “ingratiation and access” aren’t corruption.
Few people know of Kennedy’s opinion a year earlier in Caperton v. Massey, in which the Court held that $3 million in independent spending supporting a candidate for the West Virginia Supreme Court by a litigant with a $50 million case before that Court created enough of a problem with ingratiation and access to require the judge to recuse himself from hearing that case.
U.S. News and World Report: Our Campaign Finance Frankenstein
Anthony J. Gaughan
As billions of dollars flow into American elections, conventional wisdom holds that we have a completely deregulated system of campaign finance law. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. What we actually have is a Frankenstein monster of mismatched laws, some that regulate campaign contributions and others that deregulate them. The result is a dysfunctional system that gives us the worst effects of regulation and deregulation without the benefits of either.
The Media
NewsBusters: Gasp! Rachel Maddow Actually Admits Money Can’t Buy Elections
Jack Coleman
“And the one thing that didn’t change between yesterday and today, of course, is that Jeb Bush’s super PAC is still sitting on a hundred million dollars! But money can’t buy you love and it can’t make you a better candidate and it can’t probably reverse universal public and political opinion.”
Maddow not just paraphrasing the Beatles here — she’s pointing out that money can’t buy elections while remaining loathe to utter such outright blasphemy. Maddow euphemizes instead, chuckling dryly, as if something long known to this old soul is finally apparent to less-evolved mortals.
Quite the contrast to her apocalyptic rhetoric after the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC nearly six years ago, the one that was supposed to replace democracy in America with iron-fisted rule by corporate overseers.
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Post: Jeb Bush still doesn’t get why his terrible debate performance matter so much
Chris Cillizza
But, the debates shape perception on a grand scale. And perceptions of the candidates — Marco Rubio ascendant, Jeb not — matter not just to major donors, who like to be with winners, but also to undecided voters, who like to be with winners too. When the brightest lights come on, you have to find a way to be your best; that’s that nature of running (and winning) presidential races in the modern-era of politics.
In short: It takes a LOT of stellar 300-person events to make up for one less-than-great debate performance. Bush, I’m guessing, understands that reality even if he doesn’t want to acknowledge it publicly.
The States
Sacramento Bee: FEC should look to California to rein in super PACs
Matthew Alvarez
At first blush, the FPPC has challenged some pretty egregious activities. But the truth is that FPPC regulations dating back to the early 2000s already covered the type of activity the FPPC targets in its updated regulations. Because it has dealt with illegal coordination issues for years, the FPPC has developed a finely tuned and effective method for promoting compliance and policing illegal coordination…
Although the FPPC just passed an unnecessary regulation, the bigger picture is the FPPC’s longstanding effectiveness and the example it sets for the FEC.
Arizona Daily Star: Elections panel moves to uncover political ‘dark money’
Howard Fischer
Friday’s vote came over the objections of Lee Miller, the deputy secretary of state. He asked the commission to delay the move to allow for further talks with his office…
Federal tax law allows some groups to seek tax-exempt status as “social welfare” organizations. And they are permitted under the tax code to spend money influencing elections.
Miller’s position is that once a group gets that federal tax status, the state’s hands are tied.
“The federal tax code and federal law trumps state law,” he said. And that tax code, said Miller, says such groups are not required to disclose donors.
Collins scoffed at that explanation.
“Federal tax law is not relevant to state campaign finance law,” he said.
Madison.com: Scott Walker campaign failed to report thousands of donor employers
Matthew DeFour
Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign failed to submit required employer information for nearly 6,000 contributors last year — by far the most of any committee and 27 times more than his Democratic opponent, according to the Government Accountability Board.
But the agency hasn’t penalized the campaign or any other committee that failed to report missing information because officials say they have made good-faith efforts to comply with the law.
State law requires campaigns to report the employer of donors who give more than $100 to a campaign committee during a calendar year, although that requirement would be eliminated under a provision in a sweeping campaign finance bill that passed the Assembly, but has stalled in the Senate.
