Campaign Finance
Politico: State and local bills try to rein in political spending
Tarini Parti
From the conservative statehouse in Texas to the liberal city council in Philadelphia, measures aimed at curbing the flow of political money or disclosing its sources are being introduced and supported by members of both parties. Overall, more than 125 bills dealing with campaign finance reform have been introduced in 33 statehouses in the past five months, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. More have been introduced in cities as well.
FEC
Washington Post: The FEC’s cry for help
Ruth Marcus
The FEC, Chairman Ann Ravel told the New York Times in May, is “worse than dysfunctional,” and speaking with me, she echoed that bleak assessment.
“I’ve never been in a situation where people do not appear to support the mission of the agency,” she said of Republican commissioners. “On any issues that I think are the most significant matters that the commission faces . . . there is not one chance that the Republicans will provide a fourth vote for those issues.”
Hence the extraordinary move by Ravel and Weintraub to prod their own agency. They ask it to write rules to ensure “dark money” disclosure and super-PAC independence.
CNN: How a silent FEC lets Jeb Bush play by his own fundraising rules
Karl Sandstrom
Is the Bush “non-campaign” evidence that the law can be easily evaded?
Whether the answer is yes or no, someone needs to make the call. The key decision maker in this case is the Federal Election Commission, a six-member panel (three Republicans and three Democrats) that has — on this issue and on a host of others — failed in its most basic responsibility to tell the public what the law is. Just a few recent examples demonstrate the agency’s failure to make timely critical decisions.
Independent Groups
Brennan Center: Candidates & Super PACs: The New Model in 2016
Brent Ferguson
The skyrocketing spending from these groups has left many concerned that elected officials work mainly for the big spenders that helped get them into office. In cases like Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court has told us not to worry: outside spending cannot corrupt a candidate, the argument goes, because the candidate cannot control that spending — it’s not in his control, he may not want it, or may not approve of the way it is spent. That argument is looking increasingly divorced from reality. This analysis will discuss several ways in which presidential candidates in the 2016 cycle are engaging in even greater collaboration with super PACs and other outside groups, obliterating the distinction between candidates and “independent” organizations, which the Court has claimed is so important.
Yahoo News: Super PACs explained
Kaye Foley
Where a super-PAC differs from a PAC is that it must be independent from a candidate and his or her campaign. Super-PACs cannot donate money to or coordinate directly with the campaign. Instead, the money raised is spent to help a candidate get elected through ads, robocalls, outreach, and voter turnout efforts.
Super-PACs must also disclose their donors and prove they haven’t had any involvement in the affairs of the candidates. But that line can get blurry, as demonstrated by Stephen Colbert with his own super-PAC in 2012.
Huffington Post: Russ Feingold Proposes Anti-Super PAC Pledge In Wisconsin Senate Race
Paul Blumenthal
If Johnson agrees, the so-called Badger Pledge would require the candidates to pay out half of the cost of any independent expense by a supportive group intervening in the race to a charity. Covered expenses would include express support or opposition of a candidate and the less-defined issue advocacy that includes an attack or boost of a particular candidate, but stops short of calling for their election or defeat.
Supreme Court
Washington Post: Looking for clues to Supreme Court’s final rulings in Ginsburg’s good mood
Robert Barnes
“The court is not a popularity contest, and it should never be influenced by today’s headlines,” Ginsburg said. But she added that it “inevitably it will be affected by the climate of the era.”
Ginsburg said law clerks had to explain that her new nickname was based on the late rapper the Notorious B.I.G., but she noted that they were both “born and bred in Brooklyn.”
Next month the opera “Scalia/Ginsburg,” based on her relationship with her friend and antagonist Justice Antonin Scalia, will get its premiere. And she talked about an upcoming movie that will star Natalie Portman and focus on Ginsburg’s work as a crusading feminist lawyer.
Balkanization: The Role of Three-Judge Courts in Conservative Attacks on Campaign Finance Reform and Voting Rights
David Gans
That’s why it is significant that the Supreme Court this week agreed to hear Shapiro v. Mack, a case concerning the circumstances in which a single federal district court judge may refuse to convene a three-judge court. In Shapiro, a constitutional challenge to congressional districting by the State of Maryland, the plaintiffs argued that the state’s congressional districts were so badly gerrymandered that they violated the Constitution. The district court disagreed, finding that the case did not warrant a three-judge court. Next Term, the Justices will decide whether the case should have been heard by three judges instead of one. While Shapiro raises only a narrow question of procedure under the Three-Judge Court Act, the consequences are significant.
Candidates and Campaigns
National Journal: How Hillary Clinton ‘Officially’ Launched Her 2016 Campaign
S.V. Date
The exact location was Four Freedoms Park, a reference to the famous Roosevelt speech in 1941. Clinton on Saturday promised “four fights,” if elected: for an economy to help the middle class; for workplace changes to strengthen families; for a foreign policy and military to keep America safe from threats; and for changes to campaign finance rules to ban secret, “unaccountable money.”
“It’s no secret that we’re going up against some pretty powerful forces that will do and spend whatever it takes to advance a very different vision for America,” Clinton said. “But I’ve spent my life fighting for children, families, and our country. And I’m not stopping now.”
New York Times: Donors Speed-Date the G.O.P. Hopefuls
Ashley Parker
“I think people want to be inspired,” said Spencer Zwick, Mr. Romney’s finance chairman. “I think they want to be inspired and they want to see a path to victory.” But, he added, “Donors, especially, want to know what is the path to victory, and I think there are a lot of donors who are not yet convinced that there is someone with a path to victory.”
Between sunrise hiking and panels aplenty and late-night drinks, something of a donor diaspora emerged. Some are sticking with Mr. Bush and the belief that he is most qualified to be president; some like Mr. Rubio’s message of generational change; others like Mr. Walker’s Midwestern charm and executive experience; and many remain undecided.
U.S. News: The Outlaw Candidate
Lawrence Noble
But if Bush and other candidates knowingly and willfully break these laws, then enforcement must come from the Department of Justice. If it doesn’t investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute clear violations of the law, the actions of the Bush campaign will become the new norm for both presidential and congressional elections. Contribution limits and prohibitions will be rendered all but meaningless and the public will have to watch our democracy become further corrupted by the appearance of elected leaders catering to the wealthiest among us.
The Daily Dot: Here are the 8 strangest people actually running for president’
Curt Hopkins
Most of us, if asked to count the candidates in the running for the American presidency in 2016, would come up with half a dozen. The political fetishists among us, possibly a half dozen more.
The actual number? 384. So far.
The States
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Campaign-finance act’s title certified
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has certified the popular name and ballot title for an initiated act that would amend Arkansas’ campaign- finance laws to require uniform reporting of independent campaign expenditures and the disclosure of donors to outside groups that spend more than $2,000 on political advertisements.
Rutledge had rejected a similar proposal from several public interest and activist groups in late May “due to misleading aspects of the proposed ballot title.”
The group Regnat Populus resubmitted the proposed act that Rutledge certified Thursday.
The popular name of the proposal will be The Campaign Finance Act of 2016.
