In the News
The Federalist: After John Doe Darkness, A New Dawn In Wisconsin
Paul Jossey
In short, Wisconsin has transformed itself from one of the worst anti-speech campaign finance states to one of the best.
Now political John Does are no more, the Government Accountability Board (GAB) that oversaw Wisconsin’s elections has been disbanded, and the state’s campaign finance laws have been refined and restated in a more honest, First Amendment-friendly way. The Wisconsin story is a warning of what can happen when laws give prosecutors unfettered license to criminalize politics. But it also demonstrates the reform possible when victims fight back and legislatures recognize the constitutional rights of its citizens.
CCP
Unredacted Crossroads GPS FEC Decision Now Available On CCP Website
Today the Federal Election Commission (FEC) agreed to produce a controversial agency report to settle a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the Center for Competitive Politics (CCP) brought against the agency. The document sets out the FEC Office of General Counsel’s original analysis concerning a complaint against Crossroads GPS that was dismissed by the FEC in 2013.
CCP had requested the document last year, and after being denied by the agency, filed an appeal in federal court. Last week, a federal court ordered the FEC to produce the report in a related case, Public Citizen v. FEC, making it highly improbable that the Commission would succeed in its opposition to CCP’s FOIA request.
Congress
The Hill: Yes to McConnell’s rider
Ray La Raja
His proposed rider to Senate omnibus legislation that would give political parties the ability to spend more in support of candidates might actually improve some of what ails the political system right now.
Here’s why you should support it:
First, McConnell’s proposal does not increase the amount of “corruption.”
There is nothing in the rider that increases the contribution limits to political parties. It changes how parties spend their money, not how they get it. The contribution limits to party remains at $33,400 annually. Despite what most people think, that is not a lot of money. (It’s .2 percent of what Google spent on lobbying last year.)
In fact, the rider helps restore transparency and accountability by moving money from Super PACs to the parties.
Daily Beast: Senate GOP Solution to Super PAC Rivals: More Money in Politics
Matt Laslo
“We’re at a point where the outside groups have so much more flexibility than the parties do that there’s nothing wrong with giving both political parties a little more flexibility in how they work with candidates,” said Roy Blunt (R-MO), a member of the GOP leadership team in the Senate…
Currently GOP and Democratic leaders can only spend about $50,000 to assist House candidates and around $3 million working with Senate campaigns. But for Super PACs the sky is the limit on what they can raise and spend, thus neutering the parties and politicians alike.
PBS: Congress passes 5-day spending bill hours before deadline
Erica Werner, Associated Press
“Everything is tenuous right now. We’ve had meetings; there’s no finality,” Senate Minority Leader Harry, D-Nev., said late Thursday. He said sticking points relate to labor and environmental issues, and to a campaign finance provision pushed by his Republican counterpart, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, to lift certain spending limits by party committees.
FEC
Huffington Post: A Super PAC Was Actually Fined For Breaking The Rules
Paul Blumenthal
In 2012, Restore Our Future, the super PAC run by Romney’s former aides, spent $4.3 million to run a television ad detailing Romney’s role in helping to locate a coworker’s missing child while he was head of Bain Capital. That spot was originally created by Romney’s even-less-successful 2008 presidential campaign. The super PAC simply rebroadcast the exact same ad with a new disclaimer saying it was paid for by Restore Our Future.
The move violated multiple campaign finance laws. The republication of campaign materials must be reported to the FEC as an in-kind donation to the campaign, which the super PAC did not do. Even if it had, super PACs are prohibited from contributing to a candidate’s campaign. The running of the ad therefore constituted a form of illegal coordination between the super PAC and the campaign.
Independent Groups
CNN: Pro-Clinton super PAC sends Trump hats to GOP 2016ers
Daniella Diaz
Hillary Clinton has a trust problem. Sixty percent of American voters – the highest number among candidates running for president – say she is not honest and trustworthy, according to a Quinnipiac University poll in November…
But there’s a better answer staring her in the face! It’s the first issue listed on her website: Campaign finance reform.
Building trust with Americans starts with championing a real plan to fight big money in politics and ensure Americans on Main Street have just as much voice on Capitol Hill and in the White House as the financiers on Wall Street.
American Prospect: Super PAC Debate Spotlights Illegal Coordination
Eliza Newlin Carney
All this begs the question why McConnell shouldn’t take up Tea Party conservatives on their suggestion, and just nix the coordination ban altogether. FEC regulations that define coordination are extremely narrow to begin with, allowing wide latitude for super PACs to share consultants and even ad footage. …
It’s probably only a matter of time before the Supreme Court, with its decided tilt toward deregulation, comes out and strikes the existing $2,700 limit on contributions to candidates in any case.
In the meantime, however, those limits remain the law of the land. The FEC may be doing little to enforce the election laws, but a federal court in June sentenced a Virginia political operative to two years in prison for running a super PAC that illegally coordinated with a congressional candidate, in a case brought by the Justice Department. Super PAC-candidate coordination is one are of campaign-finance law where both the Department and the FEC have considerable leeway to prosecute violations more aggressively, according to Noble.
Campaign Spending Effectiveness
Cincinnati Enquirer: Cost for losing marijuana campaign: $17 a vote
Anne Saker
Filing final campaign-finance reports Friday, the private investor group that pushed marijuana legalization this year in Ohio spent more than $17 a vote in its losing effort for Issue 3, while opponents spent less than a dollar a vote to defeat the measure.The campaign was the most expensive marijuana issue in the nation’s history.
New York Magazine: Republican Billionaires Just Can’t Seem to Buy This Election
Gabriel Sherman
You’d think buying an election would be easy. This is, after all, the rough pitch that political consultants deliver when persuading donors to part with their money. (It’s also the primary theme of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign.) The formula traditionally goes like this: Out-raise the competition, bludgeon them with attack ads, and watch the votes roll in. In the five years since the Supreme Court enshrined unlimited campaign contributions to organizations not directly affiliated with candidates, money has poured into the political system. And yet spending the cash haul effectively has never been more difficult.
Influence
Politico: WMUR booted from next Democratic debate
Hadas Gold and Gabriel Debenedetti
The reason? A labor dispute between a handful of employees at the station, WMUR, and its owner, the Hearst CorporationS. The Democratic National Committee announced WMUR’s fate on Friday in a joint statement with the New Hampshire Democratic Party that blamed the TV channel and Hearst for the impasse.
The super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton is picking up what the candidate is putting down when it comes to lumping the entire GOP field with front-runner Donald Trump.
The group, Correct The Record, says it has mailed versions of Donald Trump’s well-known “Make America Great Again” trucker hat to Republican candidates, each with a candidate-customized take on what the group considers anti-Muslim rhetoric.
“The hateful proposals of the rest of the Republican presidential field are just as outrageous as Trump’s,” the group said in a statement.
Candidates and Campaigns
Center for Public Integrity: Inside Ben Carson’s small-dollar fundraising machine
Carrie Levine
Indeed, three-fourths of Carson contributors who gave $200 or more to his campaign — 18,475 people — have not donated to any other federal political candidate since at least 2007, according to an analysis of campaign finance data by the Center for Responsive Politics that the Center for Public Integrity commissioned.
The overwhelming success of the campaign in attracting small donors is not due solely to the grassroots appeal of the mild-mannered giver of a now-famous speech at that 2013 National Prayer breakfast.
The success can also be credited to the Carson campaign’s expensive and ambitious fundraising strategy. The campaign has paid millions of dollars this year to telemarketers and fundraising firms to identify and cultivate the kinds of potential donors — like George Anderson — who are now largely bankrolling his campaign.
Washington Post: Cruz campaign credits psychological data and analytics for its rising success
Tom Hamburger
Cruz has largely built his program out of his Houston headquarters, where a team of statisticians and behavioral psychologists who subscribe to the burgeoning practice of “psychographic targeting” built their own version of a Myers-Briggs personality test. The test data is supplemented by recent issue surveys, and together they are used to categorize supporters, who then receive specially tailored messages, phone calls and visits. Micro-targeting of voters has been around for well over a decade, but the Cruz operation has deepened the intensity of the effort and the use of psychological data.
Salon: The one simple thing Hillary Clinton can do to fix her trust problem
Joan Mandle
Hillary Clinton has a trust problem. Sixty percent of American voters – the highest number among candidates running for president – say she is not honest and trustworthy, according to a Quinnipiac University poll in November…
But there’s a better answer staring her in the face! It’s the first issue listed on her website: Campaign finance reform.
Building trust with Americans starts with championing a real plan to fight big money in politics and ensure Americans on Main Street have just as much voice on Capitol Hill and in the White House as the financiers on Wall Street.
The States
Salem Statesman Journal: Campaign finance reform still unresolved
Gordon Friedman
That group, the Joint Interim Task Force on Campaign Finance Reform, met Thursday last week to discuss its next steps before the monthlong legislative session which begins February 1. Among the debate over campaign contributions, the task force is also considering whether the state should have new laws making money in politics more transparent and what recommendations to make to the Legislature.
Several lawmakers expressed doubt that limiting campaign contributions would keep more money out of politics. On the contrary, Rep. Dan Rayfield (D-Corvallis) said, it could lead to money being spent through less transparent or controllable means.
If someone wants to spend money to influence an election, he said, they will find a way to do it, contribution limits or not. If money can’t be given to an official campaign, some task force members said, it’d likely be spent as an independent expenditure instead. Independent expenditures are expenses on “communications” advocating for or against a political candidate, made without consultation of the candidate or their campaign.
Crain’s New York: Skelos conviction sets up ethics reform, campaign strategies in 2016
Rosa Goldensohn
As of Friday afternoon’s guilty verdict in a federal corruption trial, state Sen. Dean Skelos is out of his Long Island seat. But the race for his spot is just one of many developments his conviction will trigger in 2016.
Democrats are planning to make the case the premise of their campaign to recapture the Senate, which is the last bastion of Republican political power in statewide politics. Democrats have a dominant majority in the Assembly and hold all statewide elected offices.
For Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Skelos’ conviction coming on the heels of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver will likely compel him to advance another ethics bill when the legislative session begins in January. Good-government groups seized on Friday’s news to galvanize their reform efforts.
