CCP
An Embarrassment at the FEC
Brad Smith
The Commissioners write, in a snarky footnote (number 7) that has too often become their style, “The laws of reason have been suspended at the FEC, where corporations are people, commissioners are not, and now Mitt Romney gets to be two different people.” What the heck are the Commissioners talking about?
The “corporations are people” bit appears to be a complaint about the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, not actual goings on at the Commission. The second has to do, it appears, with the effort by Ravel and Weintraub earlier this year to file a public petition for rulemaking with the FEC. The Commissioners wanted to the FEC to pass a rule that would have greatly expanded the Commission’s regulatory reach on a rather dubious theory of statutory construction. When it became clear that they could not persuade a Commission majority to open such a rulemaking, they sought to force the Commission to open a rulemaking by filing a petition with their own agency. And the third–“Mitt Romney gets to be two different people”–addresses the MUR in question.
It is bad enough that the commissioners are using a Statement of Reasons in this MUR to complain about Supreme Court and Commission decisions elsewhere. But what is so embarrassing is the sheer demagoguery of the footnote.
SEC
USA Today: Hasty law can’t stop SEC rule on political disclosure
Darrell Delamaide
But the wording of the law does not prohibit the SEC from going ahead with the long rulemaking process anyway, according to 94 Democratic lawmakers who sent a letter to SEC Chair Mary Jo White last week, backed up by a legal opinion from a Harvard professor.
“This provision does not bar the SEC from discussing, planning, investigating, or developing plans or possible proposals for a rule or regulation relating to disclosure of political contributions,” said the letter, signed by Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, along with 26 other senators and 66 representatives.
Independent Groups
Wall Street Journal: Super PAC Donors Are Taking Charge
Rebecca Ballhaus
That didn’t mean the Deasons’ funds were wasted. The family got a refund of about $4.5 million and in October decided to throw their support behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, but with a catch: The Deasons haven’t yet given to super PACs backing Mr. Cruz.
“Super PAC money is irrelevant right now,” Mr. Deason said in an interview. He said when he eventually donates, he’ll mandate the majority of his family’s funds be reserved for the general election.
Wealthy donors have learned their lesson since the 2012 elections, when super PACs spent millions backing unsuccessful candidates in primaries. Today, they’re seeking to keep a tighter grasp on their funds, in the process further fragmenting an already complicated playing field.
New York Times: ‘Super PACs’ Still Have Time to Serve as Candidates’ Attack Dogs
Maggie Haberman
Months after it became clear that “super PACs” could not, in fact, supplant the core functions of a campaign, several of the unlimited-money groups that are backing presidential candidates are reverting to 2012 form — with a series of blistering attack ads.
Super PACs supporting the campaign of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas are set to unload on Senator Marco Rubio of Florida on television in Iowa and elsewhere. Jeb Bush’s supportive super PAC, Right to Rise USA, ran its first negative ad against Mr. Rubio shortly before the new year. Mr. Bush has also signaled potential coming lines of attack against Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, pointing out the state’s credit downgrades during his tenure and contrasting that record with his own.
Influence
Politico: How Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff helped a Democratic bundler
Rachael Bade
Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff Cheryl Mills did a favor for a former Bill Clinton staffer-turned-Hillary campaign donor, giving the auto dealer, who was heavily invested in China, access to a bilateral U.S.-China event at the State Department where he could promote his private business interests.
In spring 2011, Mills invited Thomas “Mack” McLarty, Bill Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, to attend the official dinner after McLarty asked for access because of “our substantial family investment in the automotive sector (including electric vehicle development in China).”
FEC
Washington Examiner: Commissioner: FEC power grabs are the real ‘dysfunction’
Rudy Takala
Republican Lee Goodman was appointed to the commission in 2013, and served as its chairman in 2014. In that time, he has become a leading voice among conservative regulators in Washington. Like former president and fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson, a portrait of whom he has hanging in his office, Goodman is a strict constructionist, and he objects to the claim made by some Democrats, including the FEC’s chairwoman, that the commission is “dysfunctional.”
Goodman says instead, “I would say the dysfunction resides in those who want to expand FEC jurisdiction beyond its constitutional boundaries.”
Washington Examiner: Harry Reid demands retirement ‘slush fund,’ FEC defers
Paul Bedard
Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is seeking to use $600,000 in campaign and political action committee funds to cover his expenses after leaving office, a request that has the Federal Election Commission concerned about the precedent it would set for using money raised while in office.
Dubbed an “administrative slush fund” by FEC Commissioner Lee E. Goodman, concerns were raised at a meeting in late December that it would let Reid run around the country promoting his agenda with funds given to help his reelection campaigns and as a senator.
“This issue of personal use vexes us,” said Goodman, who prefers more restrictions on the money in Reid’s campaign coffers and Searchlight Leadership Fund than his Democratic colleagues on the commission.
Political Parties
Pacific Standard: How Campaign Finance Reform Contributed to Polarization
Seth Masket
Parties, it turns out, tend to support relatively moderate candidates. They do so because, as the authors note, “parties are the sole political organization whose primary goal is to win elections.” This is a key point. Issue activists, individual donors, and others tend to back relatively extreme candidates precisely because they want those candidates to move the government in one direction or another. They have a set of issues they care about—abortion, corporate tax rates, minimum wage levels, etc.—and they fiercely want to change the direction of government on those issues. They may end up giving to candidates to reward them for their past stances on issues and to encourage them to remain steadfast to their agenda.
Huffington Post: Democrats Are Proving Samuel Alito and John Roberts Wrong
Paul Blumenthal
A joint fundraising committee linking Hillary Clinton to the national Democratic Party and 33 state parties is routing money through those state parties and back into the coffers of the Democratic National Committee. So far, 22 of the state parties linked to the Hillary Victory Fund have received $938,500 from the fund and sent the same amount back to the DNC, according to available campaign finance records. The Clinton campaign claims to have raised an additional $18 million for the party committees in the final three months of 2015, although records will not be disclosed until Jan. 31.
The movement of money from a joint fundraising committee through state parties and to the national party committee has been criticized by campaign finance reformers as a way to get around campaign contribution limits.
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Post: One year, two races: Inside the Republican Party’s bizarre, tumultuous 2015
Dan Balz, Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Matea Gold
What is clearest is what didn’t work in 2015, though it often worked in the past. Television advertising moved few voters. Policy rollouts fell on deaf ears. Impressive political résumés proved not to be persuasive. What took on the Republican side was a new kind of politics, one built on emotion and visceral connection. To some people, this represented a worrying turn toward a darker and more divisive politics. To others, it was a welcome turn away from what they considered to be too much political correctness.
Politico: Clinton and Sanders cash dash tells tale of 2 campaigns
Gabriel Debenedetti
But just how much did Sanders raise for other Democrats? Nothing.
That $18 million gap is the clearest delineation yet of the fault line in the Democratic primary, a rift that’s as much about fundraising strategy as it is about campaign philosophy. It’s laid bare a contest between an establishment-oriented front-runner who has embraced her role as the party’s de facto leader — promising since the first days of her campaign to raise funds to rebuild local parties from the ground up — and a populist insurgent who only recently started identifying as a Democrat.
New York Times: Marco Rubio Endorses Idea for Constitutional Amendment to Set Congressional Term Limits
Maggie Haberman and Michael Barbaro
Mr. Rubio had said in the past that he was open to such an undertaking. But over the last two days in Iowa, where he is behind in the polls, Mr. Rubio has made a call for a Constitutional Convention, earning applause every time.
At times, the proposal can sound like a civics lesson. “Article V of the Constitution,” Mr. Rubio said in Pella, Iowa, on Wednesday, “gives us power as citizens of this great country to take into our own hands the ability to take power away from the federal government.”
He added, “That’s why we need a Constitutional Convention.”
The States
New York Times: Mr. Cuomo’s Challenges: The Short List
Editorial Board
The No. 1 issue should be the most obvious: the abysmal transgressions of the Albany crowd. Mr. Cuomo has acknowledged the need for ethics reform after the corruption convictions of two Albany powerhouses, Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos. But he keeps trying to lower expectations, arguing that there is little he can do about runaway political spending as long as the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision is in force, and blaming the Republicans in the Legislature for doing nothing to reform its own scandalous behavior.
These are excuses meant to shield Mr. Cuomo from future criticism. Of course he will need the Legislature’s help. But that does not excuse him from pushing an aggressive agenda.
Sacramento Bee: California Supreme Court allows campaign finance measure on ballot
Alexei Koseff
A disputed advisory measure on the merits of unlimited independent campaign spending may proceed to the ballot after all.
The California Supreme Court ruled 6-1 on Monday that Proposition 49, a nonbinding query to voters on whether Congress should seek to amend the Constitution to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision, is constitutional.
The measure, which was intended for the November 2014 ballot, is no longer eligible for consideration. But lawmakers are now free to pursue an identical inquiry in 2016 – as well as other advisory questions that could similarly inform the pursuit of a federal constitutional amendment.
