Trump’s SCOTUS List of 21
By David Keating
Scott v. Roberts presented Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott’s challenge to a tax-financed campaign scheme the state enacted in 1986 and amended in 1991. The program generally operated as a matching funds program… However, once an opponent to a tax-financed candidate spent over $2/registered voter, the subsidized candidate received a dollar-for-dollar match of his opponent’s spending. The subsidized candidate no longer needed to raise any private funds to receive the subsidy. The law also allowed subsidized candidates to exceed expenditure limits. Judge Pryor held the scheme was likely unconstitutional, and the opinion overturned a district court’s denial of a preliminary injunction…
In Beaulieu v. City of Alabaster, Judge Pryor joined an opinion that held a city’s sign-usage ordinance unconstitutional. The ordinance placed different burdens on commercial and political signs…
Applying strict scrutiny, the panel affirmed the district court ruling, which overturned the ordinance. The panel determined that the city’s interests in aesthetics and safety did not overcome the core political speech at issue.
In the News
Observer: New Fed Court Ruling Should Encourage NJ Lawmakers seeking More Disclosure
By Jeff Brindle
On November 4, 2016, the United Stated District Court for the District of Columbia struck another blow on behalf of disclosure.
In Independence Institute v. FEC, the Court rejected the organization’s claim that disclosure requirements under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) should not apply to its planned advertising campaign.
The Institute, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, planned to run radio advertisements urging Colorado Citizens to contact two federal lawmakers to support a particular piece of legislation.
Arguing that the ads are issue ads, the Institute maintained that they should be exempt from BCRA’s electioneering communication disclosure provisions…
Recently, Assembly Minority Leader John Bramnick and Democratic Assemblyman Troy Singleton each introduced bills that would require registration and disclosure by independent groups such as Super PACs and 501(c) groups.
The recent ruling in Independence Institute v. FEC, which again strongly endorses disclosure, will hopefully embolden the Legislature to pass this legislation and enhance transparency in the State’s electoral process.
CCP
[F]orcing people to divulge their names, addresses, and political leanings exposes them to reprisals. Every election cycle brings fresh evidence of this phenomenon; even the most basic acts of civic engagement can trigger threats of violence, lawsuits, and career-ending social-media crusades. In the past, the Court has discounted this speech deterrent consequence, reasoning that only actual targets of harassment are chilled from speaking. But in the Information Age, it is often impossible to predict what viewpoints may provoke retaliation, much less prove it in court.
[M]andatory-disclosure laws chill speech by forcing people to surrender their “privacy interest in keeping personal facts away from the public eye.” Outside the First Amendment context-in Freedom of Information Act cases, for instance-the Court gives great weight to “the individual’s control of information concerning his or her person.” [Citation Omitted] That same solicitude should extend to citizens who do not wish to give up their personal information as the cost of engaging in advocacy or protest.
FEC
CPI: With morale in tatters, Federal Election Commission eyes changes
By Dave Levinthal
Federal Election Commission leaders – dogged by abysmal staff morale and a top manager improperly obtaining employees’ confidential critiques – are considering changes to how the agency operates in a bid to restore staff trust.
Chief among them: the creation of a new “ombudsman” office dedicated to investigating and resolving staff complaints and internal conflicts, according to an internal proposal written by the agency’s chairman and obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.
As written, the proposal further calls for formal, anonymous reviews of agency managers by subordinates, as well as better manager training.
Staff Director Alec Palmer would also be required to file quarterly reports with the agency’s six commissioners detailing, among other things, “the status and success of efforts made to establish and maintain high morale among agency staff.”…
The FEC’s Office of the General Counsel is also making changes in this year to “address areas of concern” and foster “growth and improvement,” according to a separate letter written earlier this month by Acting General Counsel Lisa Stevenson to her staff.
Citizens United
CRP: Seven years later: Blurred boundaries, more money
By Emily Dalgo and Ashley Balcerzak
Among the inaugural festivities and protests this weekend, spare a thought Saturday for the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee ruling – a decision that has left a deeper footprint with every election cycle.
After the 5-4 decision, which freed corporations and unions to make unlimited independent political expenditures, the super PAC was born. And that creature has gone forth and multiplied: Super PAC spending in the 2016 cycle was almost double its level in last presidential election, $1.1 billion compared to $609 million in 2012. The number of super PACs likewise nearly doubled, going from 1,300 to more than 2,400 in just four years.
Neither major political party is immune to the influence of outside money since Citizens United; liberal super PACs spent $440 million in 2016 while conservative super PACs spent $648.2 million.
Independent Groups
Politico: Major Democratic super PAC hires Clinton, Sanders vets for relaunch
By Gabriel Debenedetti
Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC that supported Hillary Clinton’s White House bid, is accelerating its move to reposition itself as a hub of post-2016 Democratic activity.
The group plans to bring on a pair of prominent operatives from both Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns, including Brian Fallon, Clinton’s national press secretary and a frequent presence on television during campaign season, who will join the group as a consultant with the position of senior adviser. While he is expected to start his own public affairs practice, Fallon will spend the bulk of his time working for Priorities. Former Sanders national press secretary Symone Sanders will assume the role of strategist for communications and political outreach, a person familiar with the moves told POLITICO.
Politico: Dems jockey for big money control
By Kenneth P. Vogel and Gabriel Debenedetti
The tug of war between Hillary Clinton’s supporters and the progressive left is spilling over onto a new front: control of liberal big money.
Some of the left’s most active financiers and groups – including the Democracy Alliance donor club – are bristling at Clinton enforcer David Brock’s plan to officially launch his own donor network this weekend to fund his efforts to rebuild the left and, in his words, “kick Donald Trump’s ass.”
Brock’s plan, first revealed by POLITICO soon after Trump’s Election Day victory, is seen in liberal finance circles as an implicit challenge to the Democracy Alliance, which was launched in 2005 by billionaire financier George Soros and other major donors.
Brock has not exactly discouraged that notion, explaining that his network will be more overtly political than the Democracy Alliance, which has endeavored to strike a balance between progressive policy initiatives and partisan politics, but which has drawn criticism from Democrats for diverting money from winning elections to focus instead on liberal donors’ pet causes.
Lobbying
Bloomberg: Trump’s K Street Office Is Open for Business
By Joshua Green
Trump’s well-advertised disdain for lobbying might seem to augur poorly for a firm seeking to peddle influence. Lewandowski and Bennett disagree. Not only do they reject the idea that their business conflicts with Trump’s swamp draining, but they insist they’ll actively abet him in the job. “I think what Donald Trump said was, Washington lobbyists have used their special access to the detriment of the American people,” Lewandowski says. “Our goal here is to help companies grow and expand, which falls directly in line with the goals of this administration.”…
To advertise their support, they’re taking the highly unusual step for a lobbying firm of creating a pro-Trump super PAC (the Great American Agenda PAC) that they’ll fund with their own money. The PAC’s purpose, Bennett says, will be to “build grass-roots energy and support for the Trump agenda, the cabinet nominees, and the Supreme Court pick.” While the PAC won’t be especially large (it will probably raise less than $1 million), Bennett says he hopes it will “build a list of a million people who we can count on raising their voices to Congress-we’ll help them every day with something they can do to push the agenda forward.”
The Intercept: DNC Chair Candidate Tom Perez Refuses to Support Ban on Corporate Money and Lobbyists
By Lee Fang
Labor Secretary Tom Perez, one of the leading candidates for chair of the Democratic National Committee, has stumbled in recent days when asked about his position on money in politics.
Asked at a DNC forum in Phoenix last Saturday whether he will “revive President Obama’s ban on corporate donations to the DNC” and a ban on appointing lobbyists as party leaders, Perez demurred.
“It’s actually not that simple a question,” Perez responded, adding that such a move might have “unintended consequences.” Perez argued that such a ban might impact “union members who are lobbyists,” though the question explicitly only addressed corporate lobbyists.
Political Parties
Niskanen Center: The Party Declines
By Jacob T. Levy
The 2016 election exposed grave vulnerability and fragility in the American party system. One major party was successfully hijacked by an extremist outsider in the face of initial opposition from a huge portion of the party’s elites and elected leaders. The other party came surprisingly close (if still not objectively very close) to meeting the same fate…
In an important new paper, NYU law professor Samuel Isaacharoff argues that the ability of American parties to effectively coordinate political action has been undermined by reforms and legal restrictions including the decline in patronage, the increasing reliance on primary elections (I would add, especially “open” primaries), and campaign finance reform that disproportionately targets highly-visible fund-raising by the parties themselves. The result is “hollowed out” institutions that are vulnerable to “hostile takeover.” Presidential campaigns end up standing substantially on their own in organizational terms, and remake the party afterwards if they win. Trump had notoriously little organizational contact or useful coordination with the RNC in the summer and fall; it turned out not to matter as much as nearly all pundits expected.
Wired: Now You Can Save the Democratic Party for the Low, Low Price of $4.68 a Month
By Emily Dreyfuss
Longtime Democratic fundraiser and political operative Jonathan Zucker today is launching It Starts Today, an online donation platform he believes can reassemble the Democratic Party for less than five dollars per month-$4.68, to be exact. That’s one cent for every congressional seat.
Zucker’s plan is to pour those monthly donations into one political action committee that will disperse the total evenly to every single Democrat running for a congressional race in the general election in 2018. It’s a one-click approach to building a 50-state strategy based on small donations. Because every candidate will get the same amount, whether a far-left Bay Area progressive or pro-gun, anti-abortion blue dog, the PAC-if it actually works-could act as a kind of de facto public financing that lifts all Democrats.
Donors
Bloomberg: Billionaire Steyer Says There’s ‘No Limit’ on His Spending Against Trump
By John McCormick and Bill Allison
Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmental activist who spent at least $87 million on the 2016 election, said he can’t begin to estimate how much of his fortune he’ll put toward fighting Donald Trump’s presidency.
“If you ask me can I put a limit on how much I value the health, the safety, the employment and the civil liberties of Americans, there’s no limit to what I think that’s worth,” Steyer, a Democrat, said in an interview Tuesday.
Steyer, the biggest individual political donor in last year’s election, channels most of his money through a network of groups known as NextGen Climate…
Steyer helped create the NextGen Climate network in 2012 after leaving Farallon Capital Management, the hedge fund he co-founded, to devote himself to conservation. In 2016, the group focused on mobilizing young voters around climate change policies. Steyer didn’t rule out using the courts as a way to challenge the Trump administration on environmental matters. “The judicial branch did not disappear,” he said.
Trump Administration
New York Times: At Dinner Honoring Mike Pence, Donald Trump Touches Many Bases
By Maggie Haberman
President-elect Donald J. Trump, in a free-flowing speech Wednesday night at a dinner honoring his running mate, Mike Pence, jabbed at his new Republican allies and his critics alike, questioned the ethics of “super PACs” and talked about creating a “merit-based” immigration system…
Such groups, like super PACs, need to be “straightened out,” Mr. Trump said. “People get very rich running PACs.”
The States
Utah Political Capitol: Flagged Bill: HB 52 – Political Contribution Reporting Amendments – Rep. Brad Daw
By Curtis Haring
Utah isn’t exactly known for its strict campaign finance laws, and one area of particular concern is the use of so-called “dark money” in elections…
And Representative Brad Daw (Republican – Orem) knows a thing or two about how dark money can be used against a candidate during an election…
It is widely believed that the negative campaigning, fueled through a web of dark money, cost Daw his seat during a 2012 primary battle.
Of course, Daw has since reclaimed his seat and, this year, he is attacking dark money head on with HB 52 – Political Contribution Reporting Amendments.
The bill is just 7 lines of proposed code and states that it should be a class B misdemeanor if someone conspires with another to hide a political contribution that would otherwise have to be reported if they were donated to an organization directly for political purposes.
Jackson Free Press: Enough Teeth in the Campaign-finance Bill?
By Arielle Dreher
On Jan. 11, the Mississippi House of Representatives voted 104-12 in favor of Gunn’s almost 30-page bill that attempts to define what lawmakers can and cannot spend their campaign money on. Lawmakers greeted the proposed legislation with some skepticism and scrutiny of some parts that seemed vague.
The bill makes spending campaign-finance funds on “personal use” items a misdemeanor that comes with a $1,000 fine, but the bill does not designate an authority to collect that specific penalty. Later in the proposed language, the Mississippi Ethics Commission is designated to impose administrative penalties and fines against political committees that fail to comply with new reporting requirements, including a new 48-hour reporting window and lawmakers and committees who fail to file their reports on time…
Rep. Randy Rushing, R-Decatur, was one of the 12 no-votes on the bill, and he said his vote was more on principle…
“I don’t think we got into the area where the true corruption is attempted, I’m not saying there is any, but to me the gift-giving area is a more vulnerable area than the donation area,” he said. “The donation area is already recorded at the secretary of state’s office, that’s already a transparent process.”
