CCP
Holmes v. FEC: Opening Brief for Plaintiffs-Appellants
Consider two individuals, Adam and Briana, who each seek to contribute in a Congressional election. Adam supports the incumbent, who faces no primary challenger, and Briana does not. Adam gives $5,200 before the primary election to the unchallenged incumbent, earmarking $2,600 for the primary and $2,600 for the general election. Briana waits out the challenging party’s primary before contributing, because she wants her money to be used to fight the incumbent rather than being wasted in an intraparty squabble. The result is that the incumbent can use all of Adam’s $5,200 contribution for general election purposes, while Briana can now only give $2,600 to the challenging party’s nominee.
Appellants Laura Holmes and Paul Jost closely mirror Briana in this example. Appellants argue that this situation violates their First and Fifth Amendment rights.
While Congress may limit the amount a particular individual gives to a particular candidate, its discretion in doing so is not limitless.
Free Speech
New York Times: Court’s Free-Speech Expansion Has Far-Reaching Consequences
Adam Liptak
The ordinance in the Reed case discriminated against signs announcing church services in favor of ones promoting political candidates. That distinction was so offensive and so silly that all nine justices agreed that it violated the First Amendment…
But Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for six justices, used the occasion to announce that lots of laws are now subject to the most searching form of First Amendment review, called strict scrutiny.
Strict scrutiny requires the government to prove that the challenged law is “narrowly tailored to serve compelling state interests.” You can stare at those words as long as you like, but here is what you need to know: Strict scrutiny, like a Civil War stomach wound, is generally fatal.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Speakers can’t be “kicked out of the pool”
Rick Esenberg
But Mills apparently wants to go beyond that. She wants to stop spending and then permit it to continue on those terms that she approves of. As she puts it, she wants to kick everyone out of the pool and then invite everyone back into the pool – if they’ll play by the Mills Rules.
But the Supreme Court has said that you can’t kick people out of the pool. You can’t prevent people from combining their resources (although you can limit the size of contributions to candidates) and using them to express themselves on candidates and issues.
The Media
Bloomberg: The Myths of the Campaign Advertising Air War
Ken Goldstein
For a media world that’s desperate to know how the war might go, these early blasts—measured in dollars—often take on an outsize significance. But it’s all too easy to misinterpret these early buys, and therefore misunderstand the battle.
The TV ad market is dizzyingly complex. Just looking at the amount of dollars spent in total or even in a particular market tells us little about what messages are reaching which targeted voters at what frequency—the key question that should concern political observers, practitioners, and analysts. In fact, political advertising may be one aspect of politics where following the money isn’t the key to understanding.
Independent Groups
Washington Post: Independent groups allied with Hillary Clinton launching effort to mobilize female voters
Matea Gold
Priorities USA Action, the lead super PAC backing Clinton, is working with Emily’s List to raise more than $20 million to reach women in battleground states through paid advertising and other voter outreach, The Washington Post has learned. The involvement of Emily’s List will be conducted through Madam President, a project of its independent expenditure arm.
The campaign will seek to drive up turnout among female voters — particularly young ones — with a message that the Republican presidential candidates would block access to health care for women and oppose fair pay. 2016 marks the first presidential contest in which the number of millennials eligible to vote will match the number of eligible voters from the baby boomer generation.
The Hill: Bush super-PAC plans $10M in TV ads
Ben Kamisar
Super-PAC officials told The Associated Press that the ads in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina will run from September through the remainder of the calendar year. Iowa kicks off the presidential nominating season on Feb. 1, with the other states following close behind.
“We believe Jeb Bush has the strongest record of conservative accomplishments in the race, and we plan to tell that story,” Paul Lindsay, the communications director for the Right to Rise USA super-PAC, said to the AP.
The spots were described to the AP as positive ads, touting his time as governor of Florida and including clips from Bush’s debate performance earlier this month.
USA Today: Billionaires crowd out the bundlers in White House race
Fredreka Schouten
Marsha Laufer, a retired speech therapist and longtime Democratic donor said: “There is only so much that money can do.”
“It comes down to the candidate’s message and the recruitment of volunteers,” said Laufer, who plans to host a fundraiser for Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton next year. “The most effective vote-getter is person-to-person contact.”
Even some early super PAC donors of the 2016 campaign say there are limits on how much they want to or can afford to give to the outside groups clamoring for big donations.
Lawrence Lessig
More Soft Money Hard Law: Professor Lessig’s Conception of the “Referendum Presidency”
Bob Bauer
Professor Lessig also argues that the enactment of political reforms would clear the way for major public policy questions to be successfully addressed. He contends that campaign funding explains stalemate on issues like student debt or climate change. A Presidency committed to political reforms, and that would end with their enactment, is justified by the wide impact that just these reforms would have on sound governance.
The social science literature does not support him on this point; and neither do specific case studies. There is a difference between emphasizing campaign funding as a public policy concern, and overstating what the reforms he proposes will accomplish. At a minimum, Lessig might say with specificity how progress on these other issues will depend on campaign funding reform, and what shape a post-reform legislative resolution would take.
Government Reporting
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Free speech is under attack in Wisconsin
Eric Bott
This is scary stuff. But while this shameful episode has concluded, the attack on free speech remains. Its latest form is a growing movement for so-called “public disclosure” laws — liberal-speak for government reporting of your private giving. These laws require that certain nonprofit organizations report all of their donors to the government, including name, home address, employer and other personal information. Government officials then publish that information for anyone to see.
Government reporting advocates claim it is an innocent transparency measure that will combat political corruption. But don’t be fooled. The reason some want donor information is so they can harass and intimidate those holding different political views, with the ultimate goal of shutting them up. This movement strikes at the heart of America’s very being and should be stamped out before it engulfs our democracy in flames.
Los Angeles Times: Follow the money? It’s not always so easy
Emily Alpert Reyes
But the uncertainty surrounding the contributions illustrates a far larger problem: Business entities routinely donate to city candidates, but it isn’t always clear who owns them. That makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the public to get a full picture of who is financially backing candidates.
It also makes it difficult to ensure that city campaign rules are being followed…
City investigators have caught such violations before: The Ethics Commission, which is empowered to subpoena personal, banking and business records to enforce campaign finance laws, has repeatedly detected cases in which people exceeded campaign contribution limits by donating through one or more firms they owned or controlled.
Candidates and Campaigns
The Hill: GOP ‘clown car’ is what democracy should look like
Eddie Zipperer
Meanwhile, the GOP field is transcending many of the systemic problems in American politics:
It’s all about money. Bush and his Right to Rise super-PAC have raked in a blush-worthy $114.6 million (as of the most recent Federal Election Commission filings) and he’s in fourth place. Meanwhile, the two guys out front, and their super-PACs, have raised a much more modest $16.5 million, combined…
As always, there will be those who laugh at me. There will be partisan hacks who’ll say all 17 choices are terrible, and so on. But 21 percent of self-identified independents still haven’t decided which primary they’ll vote in yet. Which one will they choose? Maybe the one that isn’t being successfully bought by the establishment candidate? Maybe the one that has enough diversity of thought to have more than six debates?
The States
Bozeman Daily Chronicle: Proposed rules make sense for Montana
Editorial Board
The new rules were seen as needed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which found that corporations have free speech rights. The ruling spurred an explosion of nonprofit “social welfare” corporations that funneled money into advertising aimed at specific political candidates but are not required to report their donors.
These groups have made their presence felt in Montana, where — as with other sparsely populated states — a little money goes a long way toward influencing less-informed voters with ads that spotlight hot-button issues. Although the ads mention targeted candidates by name, they do not urge voters to vote one way or the other and have therefore been seen as legal under the Citizens United ruling — at least so far.
Colorado Independent: Antiabortion group blows off court ordered fine and paperwork
Marianne Goodland
According to the Secretary of State’s elections database, the anti-abortion group has yet to register as a committee under the Fair Campaign Practices Act or file required reports.
Colorado Campaign for Life joined with Rocky Mountain Gun Owners in waging the failed federal lawsuit last October, one month after Ethics Watch filed a campaign finance complaint against the organizations for mailers sent to voters in two Senate districts. The complaint was based on the fact that neither group submitted required disclosures on who paid for the letters or how money was spent on campaigns.
