In the News
Star Tribune: Bill opens door to the speech police
By Matt Nese and Annette MeeksThe irony would be funny if it weren’t so frightening. A Minnesota Senate committee that refuses to hear public testimony is considering a bill that would massively expand the state’s regulation of political speech — under the guise of improving transparency.This measure, Senate File 214, would require any group that simply mentions the name of a candidate within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election to report the names and home addresses of many of their supporters to the government. These reports would then be published online and made accessible to anyone, from current and prospective employers to nosy neighbors.Unsuspecting groups don’t have to tell the public how to vote, or even whether to vote at all. If they simply pick the wrong month to say a candidate’s name, the speech police will be on their trail, demanding their donor list.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Prosecutor alerts justices to secrecy violation in John Doe
By Jason SteinProsecutor Fran Schmitz made the allegation in a sealed letter to the court Thursday and also referenced the allegation in an open cover letter that was released by the court’s clerk for the first time Friday.Schmitz doesn’t name the violation in the open letter or speculate on the leaker’s identity, but he made the allegation only days after a Wall Street Journal editorialwrote about the contents of a sealed motion made by the special prosecutor in the John Doe probe.Continues:Also Friday, the Supreme Court released a number of friend-of-the-court briefs filed in the high-profile cases from groups including: the state Government Accountability Board, the Center for Competitive Politics, Wisconsin Family Action, Citizens for Responsible Government, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin and four former Federal Election Commission members.
Tax Analyst: Donors to Tax-Exempts Often Give Super-Sized Amounts
By Paul C. BartonBut von Spakovsky said the idea that contributors to a 501(c)(4) can later pull the strings of a winning candidate “is the kind of anecdotal claim for which [progressives] have no proof.” Most winning candidates, he said, will have no idea who contributed to a 501(c)(4) that might have supported them.“I think there is not much evidence that policies at the federal level are tilted to the right. Barack Obama is still president, and last time I looked he has not been signing bills endorsed by Crossroads GPS,” said David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics.
Independent Groups
Politico: Democracy Alliance’s goal: Push Hillary Clinton to the left
By Kenneth P. Vogel and Tarini PartiAn influential coalition of the biggest liberal donors is quietly distancing itself from the national Democratic Party and planning to push its leaders — including Hillary Clinton — to the left.The Democracy Alliance funders club at a private April gathering in San Francisco is set to unveil a five-year plan to boost causes on which some of its members contend leading Democrats like Clinton have been insufficiently aggressive.Some within the club’s ranks had felt that it aligned too closely to the Democratic Party during President Barack Obama’s campaigns and administration. And the plan, called 2020 Vision, represents a more assertively liberal direction for Democracy Alliance — one that could pose problems for Clinton in her expected presidential campaign and beyond, if she wins the White House.
More Soft Money Hard Law: Looking Back (Again) on Citizens United
By Bob BauerSkeptics reply that the Court is just advancing inch by inch in an attack on the basic framework of laws and rules established in the 1970’s. They don’t trust the Roberts majority intentions and point to doctrinal proclamations– first and foremost ,the limited reading it has given to the compelling government interest in preventing corruption or its appearance. And it did not help the Court dispel this impression of what Professor Tribe calls “opportunistic overreach ” when it rushed past more limited solutions to CU’s problems to establish a corporate and union right to make “independent expenditures.”This haste to break new constitutional ground, an apparent lunge for a particular result out of doctrinal zeal, is a high cost of Citizens United. But the Court decided as it did, and in the light of subsequent events, it is possible with the passage of time to something of considerable value in the reverberations from this case.The corruption jurisprudence before Citizens United was shot through with ambiguity and inconsistency. The Austin case that the court overruled was undoubtedly an “outlier”. The McConnell case laid out a ground for the regulation of “corruption” in campaign finance that was unsatisfactorily vague and open ended and apparently needed to compensate for the inadequacies of the record. Now at least it’s clear: only the narrowest reading of conduct corruption suffices for constitutional purposes before this Court.
Privacy
Washington Post: What would privacy expert Louis Brandeis make of the digital age?
By Neil RichardsIn 1890, Louis Brandeis, the future Supreme Court justice, and his law partner Samuel Warren wrote what became the most famous article on the right to privacy in American history. Warren and his young wife, Mabel, were upset about gossip items in the Boston society press — including stories about Mrs. Warren’s friendship with President Grover Cleveland’s young bride — and this aristocratic distaste for invasions of what Warren called their “social privacy” led him to seek Brandeis’s help in proposing a new legal remedy.But Warren and Brandeis faced a challenge. Unlike European law, American law had not, historically, protected celebrities from the hurt feelings that resulted from offenses against honor or dignity. So Warren and Brandeis set out to radically transform American law by proposing an entirely new legal right, which they called “the right to be let alone.” The right they formulated had three elements: It allowed celebrities to sue the press for emotional injury, it allowed citizens to remove true but embarrassing information from public debate, and it required courts to distinguish between what was and wasn’t fit for the public to know.
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
Wall Street Journal: Ted Cruz to Announce 2016 GOP Presidential Bid
By Janet HookTexas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose combative approach to politics has helped guide the Republican Party’s right wing, will formally enter the 2016 presidential race on Monday, kicking off a primary-election debate about how aggressively conservative the GOP should be as it seeks to recapture the White House.Aides to Mr. Cruz said he would announce his candidacy in a speech at a Christian university in Virginia, becoming the first major candidate of either party to do so and heightening his national visibility.The announcement by Mr. Cruz marks the beginning of the primary election battle to define a Republican Party that is divided about the balance between ideology and pragmatism, and which is uncertain about who should lead it. His candidacy comes as recent polls indicate that none of the likely candidates has yet emerged as a bridge-building consensus choice among the party’s factions.
NY Times: Prosecution of Senator in 2008 Looms Over Menendez Case
By Matt ApuzzoWASHINGTON — In 2008, the Justice Department took the unusual step of indicting a sitting United States senator. Prosecutors described the senator, Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, as a crafty politician who concealed the expensive gifts that had been lavished upon him by one of his friends, a millionaire oil contractor. The case ultimately collapsed, becoming an embarrassing cautionary tale about overzealous prosecuting.Now, federal corruption prosecutors are close to once again bringing charges against a senator, Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat. The Justice Department’s public corruption unit, which was overhauled after the Stevens case, is running the investigation. Once again, the case involves a lawmaker and gifts from a wealthy friend.“As soon as I saw those headlines, it brought me right back,” John Wolfe, a Seattle lawyer who represented Mr. Stevens’s son in the investigation years ago, said. “Do they have it all tied up? Because if they don’t, the government has got to know it’s in for the next fight of its life.”
Wall Street Journal: Rick Perry Picks Up Texas Donors in GOP Turf Battle
By Colleen McCain NelsonFormer Texas Gov. Rick Perry is locking down some major donors in his home state as the competition for dollars there intensifies among likely presidential candidates.Perry donors are planning events in five Texas cities beginning March 30. A list of host committee members for the events includes dozens of supporters from Texas business and political circles.Texas is fertile fundraising terrain, and Republicans are already jockeying to line up deep-pocketed donors in the state. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recently announced plans for a Texas fundraising swing next week.
Politico: FBI begins probe of Aaron Schock spending
By Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Anna PalmerThe Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun interviewing people close to Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock, signs of a criminal investigation and serious legal trouble for the Republican congressman, according to sources familiar with the probe.
Lobbying and Ethics
Washington Post: Obama promised to curb the influence of lobbyists. Has he succeeded?
By Juliet EilperinCritics deride it as political grandstanding, a move that has deprived the administration of talent and has been repeatedly circumvented.Even Stanford University political science professor Bruce Cain, who supports the order, said in an interview: “The problem that you have is that the political actors strategically adapt to the rules that you have. You have to realize you’re never going to completely close that influence gap.”Some lobbyists — who under federal law are required to register only if they spend at least 20 percent of their time lobbying — chose to deregister once the rules took effect. The number of registrations dropped from 13,367 when Obama took office to 11,509 last year, according to an analysis by American University government professor James Thurber.
State and Local
New York –– NY Daily News: Progressive Bill de Blasio kills NYC’s campaign finance program
EditorialLet Mayor de Blasio admit this fact: His bear hug of the Fund for One New York, the not-at-all-independent nonprofit advocacy group he created, is hastening the demise of the city’s public campaign finance system.For a quarter century, that system — which limits contributions to candidates, matches small gifts with public dollars and caps spending — has been lauded by progressives, de Blasio included, as leveling the democratic playing field and amplifying the voices of ordinary citizens.“We are the gold standard,” he said last year.
Maryland –– Washington Post: A campaign reform without cash in Montgomery County
EditorialThe bill establishing the public financing scheme was approved unanimously by the county council and signed by County Executive Isiah Leggett (D). For it to get off the ground, it needs a modest infusion of cash — at least $2 million a year through the 2018 elections.But in Mr. Leggett’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year, the amount set aside is $0.Granted, the county’s $5 billion budget is tight, and Mr. Leggett refrained from suggesting tax increases. It’s also true that, as one county official said, “We didn’t need to [fund the system] yet, so we’re not doing it yet.” After all, local elections are still more than three years off.
Massachusetts –– Mass. campaign-finance rules won’t pass constitutional muster
By Jeff JacobyWhat does Massachusetts have against the First Amendment?A lawsuit filed in Superior Court by two family-owned companies — 1A Auto Inc., an auto-parts vendor in Pepperell, and 126 Self Storage Inc., a storage-unit rental firm in Ashland — challenges state campaign-finance rules so crazily lopsided they should be equipped with grab bars. Massachusetts law has long banned businessesfrom contributing to political candidates or parties, but under rules dating back to the 1980s, labor unions are free to spend up to $15,000 per year in direct political contributions with no disclosure required. Labor unions can also set up PACs — political action committees — to funnel money to candidates and parties they support. Businesses in Massachusetts aren’t allowed to do that either.The sheer unfairness of such regulations speaks for itself. Whatever your view of unions or businesses — or of any interest group — there should be only one standard for determining whether they can engage in political expression. In 15 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, businesses and unions alike are prohibited from making direct campaign contributions. Nearly twice as many states permit both to contribute on equal terms. If you didn’t know better, you might think it a no-brainer that a state like Massachusetts — a cradle of American liberty, the home of such free-speech champions as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Louis Brandeis — would be in the second group, holding the marketplace of ideas open to all comers.
New Mexico –– NM In Depth: “Dark money” bill dies
By Trip JenningsLost in the drama of Saturday was the death of legislation that would have exposed so-called “dark money” groups to more public scrutiny.The cause of death?Late-session disagreements and wariness in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
