In the News
Newsweek: Blame Me for the Explosion In Super-PAC Ads
David Keating
Money isn’t speech and neither Citizens United nor SpeechNow says it is. But what money allows people is to communicate to voters. To take one example, how can one run a newspaper ad without paying the newspaper for it? If Congress could limit such spending, then it might well have the power to limit the amount spent to produce a newspaper, blog, or even to promote religious views.
That’s why Super-PACs are a good thing. They allow people with similar views to speak together to promote them by speaking to other Americans. And with more money spent on speech, voters are better informed about the candidates and the added information boosts turnout too.
CCP
Iowa and New Hampshire Results Indicate Money’s Failure to Buy the 2016 Election
Scott Blackburn and Luke Wachob
Jeb Bush’s campaign provides the clearest example that money alone cannot persuade voters to support a candidate. Despite leading his opponents in combined spending by his campaign and the super PAC supporting his candidacy, Bush finished 6th in Iowa and 4th in New Hampshire. The Bush campaign and pro-Bush super PAC ultimately spent $2,592 per vote received, more than any other candidate in the Republican race.
Money spent didn’t translate to votes received for the rest Vote Share Chart 2of the GOP field either. For all candidates combined, spending was negatively correlated with votes. Taken together, the Marco Rubio campaign and independent super PACs supporting his candidacy spent just over $48 million, more than every Republican candidate except Bush and Ben Carson, but Rubio finished 3rd in Iowa and 5th in New Hampshire. Donald Trump, who spent the least of any candidate still actively campaigning, finished 2nd in Iowa and 1st in New Hampshire.
IRS
USA Today: Washington’s culture of corruption rots on
Glenn Harlan Reynolds
And that’s the worst outcome of all. It’s not just that evidence overwhelmingly points to the IRS having been weaponized in an effort to neutralize Obama’s Tea Party opposition. It’s that ordinary Americans can look at this and conclude that there’s no reason to follow the law if they can get away with breaking it since the people in charge of enforcing the law clearly regard it with contempt.
In an influential essay several years back, Gonzalo Lira warned of the coming middle-class anarchy, when ordinary Americans decide to be no more lawful than they have to be.
There are plenty of nations that work that way — where both the ruling class and the ruled view the law with contempt and obey it only when forced to. Such places are, generally, not as nice as places where the rule of law pertains. But avoiding that kind of outcome requires principles and self-discipline on the part of the ruling class, something that contemporary America conspicuously lacks. Welcome to the era of hope and change.
New York Times: Karl Rove Bamboozles the I.R.S.
Editorial Board
The public’s voice is sorely needed on an issue that is at the very heart of concern over an affluent minority’s growing power in American politics. Trying to portray sheer check-writing power as a “social welfare” benefit insults honest taxpayers. “Operating for the benefit of one particular candidate or party, it’s hard to say that’s not private benefit,” Marcus Owens, the former I.R.S. director of exempt organizations, told ProPublica in reacting to the agency’s misguided blessing of the Rove machine.
The Hill: Tempers flare at IRS hearing
Naomi Jagoda
In his opening statement, Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) complained that the hearing was the 23rd held about the IRS in recent years.
“Unfortunately, Republicans have become obsessed with investigating any and every allegation relating to the IRS, no matter how small,” he said…
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio.), chairman of the Oversight subcommittee on administrative rules, fired back.
“We’re not trying to get the IRS. The IRS was trying to get conservative Americans who were exercising their First Amendment, free speech right,” he said. “Twenty-three hearings is a pretty small price to pay when you’re trying to protect fundamental liberties in the Constitution, for goodness sake.”
Jordan said the hearings are warranted because the IRS has engaged in a pattern of destroying records and documents.
Independent Groups
New Yorker: Donald Trump and Citizens United: A Modest Proposal
Andrew Marantz
But now, as a Trump victory starts to seem conceivable, perhaps even inevitable, one can imagine an unprecedented coalition of strange bedfellows—Evangelical and libertarian, populist and pro-business, Koch and Soros—uniting against their common enemy. They might want to form one overarching Super PAC—Duck Donald, maybe?—to pool money and staff, and to coördinate a national anti-Trump strategy. They might want to donate prolifically, from both personal and corporate accounts. They might want to commission propaganda films to be viewed on Oculus headsets, Trump’s hair flapping grotesquely in virtual space.
Much of this would have been subject to legal limitations if not for recent, controversial theories put forward by a conservative Supreme Court. In other words, the most effective barrier to a Trump Presidency might be liberals’ least-favorite Supreme Court opinion of the past decade: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Los Angeles Times: Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS manages to make it even harder to find the dark money in U.S. politics
Richard L. Hasen
If you know nothing else about a candidate except that he or she is backed by the Koch brothers or George Soros, it’s often enough to help you make an informed decision about how you want to vote. Unfortunately, this week it became clear that finding out which plutocrats, corporations and interest groups are bankrolling American elections is only going to get harder.
The blog at the indispensable website OpenSecrets.org, of the Center for Responsive Politics, reported Tuesday that the IRS had quietly granted 501(c)(4) nonprofit status to Karl Rove’s political group Crossroads GPS. That implicitly gives a green light to “social welfare groups” to spend enormous sums on political ads, all without disclosing where these groups get their money.
Vox: PBS Democratic debate transcript: 5 key moments
Tara Golshan
Moderator:…But nearly half of your financial sector donations appear to come from just two wealthy financiers, George Soros and Donald Sussman for a total of about $10 million. You have said that there is no quid pro quo involved. But is that also true of the donations that wealthy Republicans give to Republican candidates, contributors including the Koch brothers?
Clinton: I can’t speak for the Koch brothers.
Are you referring to a super PAC that we don’t coordinate with, that was set up to support President Obama that has now decided they want to support me? They are the ones who should respond to any questions.
FEC
Indianapolis Star: FEC OKs DePauw stipend for Clinton intern
Brendan James
An Indiana college student convinced an often-deadlocked Federal Election Commission on Thursday that allowing DePauw University to pay her a stipend for interning on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is not an illegal campaign contribution.
One Democrat joined the three Republican members of the commission in agreeing that the $3,000 grant DePauw offered to Victoria Houghtalen last year was for a “bona fide” educational experience and not direct compensation for campaign work.
The two commissioners who disagreed argued that the decision will allow unidentified donors to fund college internship programs to benefit certain campaigns.
“It’s quite clear that corporate contributions are not appropriate,” said Commissioner Ann Ravel, a Democrat. “I am too concerned about the potential ramifications about this, given the clear law that we have.”
Influence
Wall Street Journal: Trump, Sanders and the American Rebellion
Peggy Noonan
I have thought for some time that there’s a kind of soft French Revolution going on in America, with the angry and blocked beginning to push hard against an oblivious elite. It is not only political. Yes, it is about the Democratic National Committee, that house of hacks, and about a Republican establishment owned by the donor class. But establishment journalism, which for eight months has been simultaneously at Donald Trump’s feet (“Of course you can call us on your cell from the bathtub for your Sunday show interview!”) and at his throat (“Trump supporters, many of whom are nativists and nationalists . . .”) is being rebelled against too. Their old standing as guides and gatekeepers? Gone, and not only because of multiplying platforms. Gloria Steinem thought she owned feminism, thought she was feminism. She doesn’t and isn’t. The Clintons thought they owned the party—they don’t. Hedge-funders thought they owned the GOP. Too bad they forgot to buy the base!
The Media
International Business Times: Media Bigwigs Donate To Hillary Clinton; Writers Donate To Bernie Sanders
Brendan James
Media people are political animals like anyone else. Federal Election Commission filings reviewed by International Business Times show that, so far in this election season, everyone from C-suite executives to political reporters has handed money over to his or her favorite candidate. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton received far more money, chiefly from company executives hitting the $2,700 cap for individual contributions. At the same time, Sen. Bernie Sanders got some cash from a few political writers who cover him fairly often.
Politico: Gawker tells staff to disclose political donations
Peter Sterne
“If you are writing about a political candidate, and you have donated money to that political candidate (or to that political candidate’s opponent), you should disclose that in the post. It does no harm, and it robs our critics of the thrill of looking up your name in a database of FEC records and waving the donations in your face,” Cook wrote in an email to all editorial staffers.
Cook is referring to an International Business Times story from Wednesday, which listed a number of journalists and media staffers whose outlets have reported on or mentioned candidates without disclosing that staff had donated money to them. The story mentioned Gawker staff writer Ashley Feinberg, who donated a total of $510 to the Bernie Sanders campaign in a series of donations last year.
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Post: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump Are Both Peddling Myths About Money In Politics
Lawrence Lessig
But on the same day that Sanders declared that campaign finance reform must come first, his campaign released a statement completely negating the significance of that promise. … As to the only change that could make his platform credible — revamping the way congressional elections are funded by adopting a system of small-dollar, citizen-funded campaigns, such as the one Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) has proposed — Sanders indicated this was something to “move toward” “over the long term.”
“Over the long term”? What exactly does Sanders expect to accomplish in the short term, before this change is enacted? As Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a speech on the floor of the Senate on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, this is not a fight for the long term. This is the fight to be having right now. The only way real change will happen in the United States is if Congress is set free from its corrupting dependence on interested money. Yet, bizarrely, Sanders doesn’t commit to promoting this essential change in Congress as a priority of his administration.
Reason: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump Are Both Peddling Myths About Money In Politics
Peter Suderman
What’s especially interesting, though, is that Donald Trump is making a version of the same pitch too. Over and over again on the campaign trail, Trump has described his campaign as self-funded, and insisted that this means he cannot be bought.
The problem, of course, is that it’s not really self-funded…
Yet it’s also true that both Trump and Sanders are operating campaigns without the same sort of hefty quasi-institutional backing that has gone to more traditional establishment candidates like, say, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. That complicates the Trump/Sanders message too. Because in that sense, the success of both Trump and Sanders is self-refuting—proof that big money in politics is not as powerful as they might have you believe.
The Hill: New Hampshire freezes GOP donors — helping Trump
Jonathan Swan
The New Hampshire primary has frozen GOP establishment donors.
They’re not stampeding toward John Kasich or away from Jeb Bush. And they’re not flocking to Marco Rubio, who plummeted after a robotic debate performance.
Instead, some of the Republican party’s wealthiest donors are either staying on the sidelines or sticking with their chosen candidate, with many hoping that South Carolina clarifies who they should support.
The winners from this fragmented state of affairs are leading outsiders Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who are receiving relatively few attack ads and would struggle if the GOP’s establishment had a clear unity candidate like 2012’s Mitt Romney.
The States
Charleston Gazette-Mail: WV Senate GOP stalls campaign finance bill after Dem amendments
David Gutman
Republican leadership in the West Virginia Senate stalled their own proposal to increase campaign contribution limits after Democrats successfully amended the bill to also require increased disclosure by “dark money” groups that spend money on elections without disclosing their funders.
The bill, as originally written, would have increased the maximum allowable contribution to candidates for state office from $1,000 per candidate, per election, to $2,700.
But Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee amended a compromise into the bill (SB 408). They would accept the increased contribution limits, which they weren’t crazy about, if Republicans agreed to requirements on “dark money” groups designed to prevent situations where organizations funnel money between each other in order to mask the original source of the money.
