In the News
Washington Post: Koch-backed conservative group wins right to withhold donor list from California
Matea Gold
“I think this has fairly large implications for the ability of states to keep expanding disclosure laws,” said Bradley Smith, chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, which has challenged the constitutionality of California’s rule.
He’s hopeful that the 9th Circuit may now reconsider his organization’s case.
“The big holding here is you’ve got to show a real legislative reason for wanting this,” Smith said. “It really does go to this idea of, how much does privacy matter? Is it enough that government wants the information and might have some need for it for some indeterminate reason in the future?”
San Francisco Chronicle: Koch-run foundation exempt from naming top donors, judge rules
Bob Egelko
In a May 2015 ruling involving another conservative foundation, the Center for Competitive Politics, the appeals court said requiring nonprofit charitable and educational organizations to report their donors to the state does not violate their rights, and that fears of public disclosure and harassment were merely “speculative.” The foundation appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied review.
Real then held a nonjury trial and found Thursday that Americans for Prosperity had shown that, in its case, enforcement of the reporting law would cause serious harm to the foundation and its contributors.
He cited evidence of protests at the foundation’s Virginia headquarters and public events, consumer boycotts of one of its major donors, and death threats against the Koch brothers and their families. “This court is not prepared to wait until an AFP opponent carries out one of the numerous death threats,” Real said.
Nonprofit Times: California Can’t Have Donor Info
Mark Hrywna
David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics (CCP), was unsure how much the decision would affect his organization’s case but what came out during the trial might. Arlington, Va.-based CCP has fought similar battles against the AG’s office in recent years.
“Representations the government made in our case turned out to be false,” Keating said, claiming they need the information to enforce the law and audit information. “In trial, it was pretty clear that they don’t use the information at all. If they need it, they can easily get it just by asking organizations for it. They haven’t had to issue a subpoena to get that information,” he said.
The office is “totally incompetent” in keeping information confidential, Keating added. “Every Schedule B was available to the public on their website if people knew how to find them,” he said. The Form 990s were scanned in sequential numbers and uploaded online but were never coded to require that the Schedule B needed a password to access it. Keating said anyone could build a tool to scrape the AG’s website to get all the information, which AFP likely did.
CCP
Who’s in on the Dirty Secret behind Tax-Financed Campaigns?
Scott Blackburn
One would expect these facts to be highlighted in a critique of tax-financing proposals, but why would Holman, a strong advocate for these systems, bring them to light? The answer, of course, is that the people Holman needs to change the law are the very same that succeeded under the system he wants to replace – the thirteen, already elected, members of the D.C. City Council. To win their support, he lets them in on the secret that this supposedly powerful “reform” will actually leave most things as they are.
This is a problem that extends far beyond D.C.’s consideration of tax-financing programs: Since incumbent politicians must craft any new tax-financed system, they will inevitably bake their incumbency advantage into any new law. Regulatory capture is a fact of life, and Holman’s op-ed is a tacit admission that “reformers” know it too.
Independent Groups
Washington Post: Trump campaign disavows pro-Trump super PAC
Jose A. DelReal
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign last month warned a prominent pro-Trump super PAC — which has put at least $1 million into advertising for the billionaire — that it is not authorized to fundraise on the candidate’s behalf in a formal letter sent by the campaign’s legal counsel.
The letter to the Great America PAC, signed by attorney Donald McGahn of Jones Day, stressed that the campaign believes the organization’s efforts run counter to the anti-big money message Trump has emphasized on the campaign trail. It said that the PAC is “using the name, image and slogan of Donald J. Trump in connection with your fundraising activity in a way that is likely to cause confusion.”
“In other words, potential supporters could be easily confused that when they make a contribution to your organization, they are supporting Donald J. Trump for President’s campaign,” wrote McGahn.
Paste: Hillary Clinton’s Super PAC, Taking a Page from Vladimir Putin, Spends $1 Million on Online Trolls
Shane Ryan
Using a tactic called “astro-turfing,” Clinton surrogates like Brock have attempted to advance the concept of the “Bernie Bro,” and to promote the idea that Sanders supporters are little more than a sexist cult…
Yesterday, Correct the Record announced they’d be taking it a step further. A new initiative called “Barrier Breakers 2016” will use $1 million (for now) to “help Clinton supporters push back on online harassment and thank superdelegates.”
This is a comical definition that does its best to hide the true purpose: Paying online trolls to support Hillary and antagonize Bernie and his supporters in an attempt to level the playing field.
Vanity Fair: Clinton Super-PAC Attacks Cruz for Rumored Nickelback Fandom
Tina Nguyen
Clinton’s campaign, taking the high road, didn’t respond directly. But a pro-Clinton super-PAC, Priorities USA, did the dirty work for her with a low-budget, Star Wars-themed video, released the very next day, mocking Cruz for his stated distaste for avocados and rumored Nickelback fandom, like the Canadian he secretly is.
New York Times: A ‘Super PAC’ Where Art Meets Politics
Celia McGee
An unusual new “super PAC,” run by artists, has cropped up on the political landscape — and it’s one that says it won’t support (or oppose) candidates or parties…
Super PACS typically raise unlimited sums from any donor and are inherently partisan. “They function to influence elections like advertising agencies,” Mr. Gottesman said, adding that For Freedoms and its projects are intended to “elevate and expand the dialogue that no longer exists in our sound-bite culture, its ‘gotcha’ tactics, or in its oversimplified conversations.”
As more artists join, more divergent views will be seen. “There are not just two sides, conservative or liberal, black or white,” Mr. Thomas said. “The country is increasingly confronting how one person’s freedom may impinge on someone else’s.”
SEC
Wall Street Journal: Schumer’s Self-Detonating Confirmation Demand
Joseph A. Grundfest
President Obama has nominated Lisa Fairfax, a Democrat, and Hester Peirce, a Republican, to fill two vacancies on the Securities and Exchange Commission. New York Sen. Charles Schumer demands that the nominees promise—in writing—that if the SEC ever considers a rule requiring publicly traded corporations to disclose political contributions, the nominees will support it.
The nominees haven’t done so, and on April 7 Mr. Schumer lambasted them for “fence-sitting” and for feeding him a bunch of “gobbledy gook.” So spurned, Sen. Schumer, joined by fellow Banking Committee Democrats Elizabeth Warren, Robert Menendez and Jeff Merkley, announced that they will oppose the nominees. The confirmation process has now ground to a halt.
Are these senators striking a powerful blow for disclosure of campaign-finance reform, or are they merely shooting themselves in the foot? There’s every reason to believe that these senators will end up limping out of the hearing room.
Congress
60 Minutes: Are members of Congress becoming telemarketers?
Norah O’Donnell
The American public has a low opinion of Congress. Only 14 percent think it’s doing a good job. But Congress has excelled in one way. Raising money. Members of Congress raised more than a billion dollars for their 2014 election. And they never stop.
Nearly every day, they spend hours on the phone asking supporters and even total strangers for campaign donations — hours spent away from the jobs they were elected to do. The pressure on candidates to raise money has ratcheted up since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. That allowed unlimited spending by corporations, unions and individuals in elections. So our attention was caught by a proposal from a Republican congressman that would stop members of Congress from dialing for dollars.
Restrictions on Political Activity
The Hill: A campaign finance reform plan that really levels the playing field
Bradley A. Blakeman
Today, citizens can only vote in the district of their domicile. A citizen does not have the right to vote in the district of their choosing. Corporations and unions should only be allowed to influence an election if they have a nexus to that district/state. It makes no sense for outsiders to have undue or unfair amounts of influence on elections in which they have no nexus. These new rules would make representatives more beholden to their constituents. I always found it very strange when a New York congressman would attend a fundraiser for his own campaign in Arizona. Also, matching a personal wealth contribution beyond a threshold by the U.S. government will insure that no citizen will have the chance to “buy” an election.
Activism
Huffington Post: This Group Raised $11 Million To Defeat Citizens United. So Why Do People Hate Them?
Paul Blumenthal
Move to Amend, a nonprofit coalition supporting a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, outright denounced the PAC on its website. “They’re co-opting the momentum and excitement for our movement to fundraise for candidates who may or may not even support amending the Constitution to ‘end Citizens United’ and who certainly have shown no leadership in addressing the even more root issue of corporate constitutional rights,” Move to Amend’s national director, Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, wrote to her group’s supporters.
Some of the long-time reformers hoped to make the clash public, but also feared negative press could further confuse and ultimately discourage supporters. Others counseled a wait-and-see approach, wanting to watch how End Citizens United PAC spent its money. The latter position won out, though many still harbored negative feelings about the PAC.
“We do not like them,” Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, said bluntly.
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Post: Donald Trump is getting a very good deal on how much he’s spending per-vote
Philip Bump
That’s different than the amount spent, of course. Smart campaigns don’t spend every dollar as it comes in — or, at least, they don’t do that at first. So the figures for how much has been spent are slightly different.
Those figures are interesting because they offer a better look at what a campaign is doing in the moment. Fundraising facilitates spending, of course, but it’s spending that more directly generates votes. Which led us to wonder who’s been doing the best job at converting spending into votes. Or, put another way: Who has spent the least for each vote that he or she has received.
The States
Alaska Dispatch News: Parade of politicians expected to appear at trial over Alaska campaign donation limits
Alex DeMarban
A key issue in the trial is whether campaign contributions have a corrupting effect on politics. The defendants in the case — the Alaska Public Offices Commission — say they can, and need to be tightly controlled.
But the plaintiffs who brought the suit, a Republican Party affiliate and three individual donors, say contribution limits improperly restrict honest donors from expressing their political views by giving money to candidates. They say candidates can avoid corruption by refusing contributions that come with strings, as one witness will attest he did when running for the Anchorage Assembly.
New York Daily News: De Blasio team skirted campaign donation limits; investigators found ‘willful and flagrant’ violations ‘warranting prosecution’
Kenneth Lovett
The head investigator for the state Board of Elections probed the 2014 fundraising efforts by Mayor de Blasio and his team on behalf of the Senate Democrats and found enough “willful and flagrant” violations to warrant a criminal referral to the Manhattan DA’s office.
The Daily News obtained a bombshell memo state Board of Elections Chief Enforcement Officer Risa Sugarman sent to the board’s four commissioners on Jan. 4 recommending the referral.
“I have determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a violation warranting criminal prosecution has taken place,” Sugarman wrote. “The violations discovered by this investigation can only be described as willful and flagrant.”
Boise Spokesman-Review: Initiative proposes sweeping changes to Idaho’s campaign finance laws
Betsy Z. Russell
Sweeping changes to Idaho’s campaign finance laws are being proposed in a voter initiative, from strict restrictions on campaign contributions from those holding or seeking big state contracts, to banning pricey lobbyist gifts to lawmakers, cutting contribution limits and doubling penalties for violations. Holli Woodings, a former Democratic state lawmaker from Boise and former candidate for Idaho Secretary of State, who is chairing the initiative campaign, says signature gatherers around the state, who just started work early last month, have now gathered the nearly 48,000 signatures necessary to make the November ballot.
Detroit Free Press: Labor unions sue state of Michigan over election law
Kathleen Gray
A coalition of labor unions sued the State of Michigan in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Friday over a law that allows corporations, but not unions, to use payroll deductions for contributions to political action committees.
