CCP
Political Spending Isn’t Choking Out Competition. Campaign Finance Regulations Are.
Brian Walsh
The real reform that is needed is not to limit the ability of individuals to support the candidates and causes of their choice, but for the FEC to understand the impediments current regulations create for entry-level candidates. Indexing certain registration and reporting thresholds (many of which remain unchanged since the 1970s) in the Federal Election Campaign Act to inflation, which the FEC has unanimously recommended to Congress, simplifying and modernizing complicated forms (as the Commission has been petitioned to do by a bipartisan group of seven prominent campaign finance lawyers, including CCP Chairman Brad Smith and Legal Director Allen Dickerson), and clarifying existing questions about draft committees, which can be instrumental in encouraging women to run for office, would be a great start.
In any event, one can hope the Commission will be sensitive to the impact of its regulations on new and upstart candidates, but rhetoric like Ms. Ravel’s doesn’t leave us especially optimistic.
Independent Groups
More Soft Money Hard Law: The Question of Super PACs in the Post-Buckley World
Bob Bauer
Distortion of that process, or the interference with its ideal functioning, is a major worry for those observing money in politics, separate from any consequences for the integrity of government that the politicians, once elected, are responsible for running. This electoral corruption of elections is different from the quid pro quo corruption of government that animates the strictly constitutional and legal debate…
These understandings of “corruption” can be, and often are, conflated, but are very different. The case against Super PACs as agents for electoral corruption is straightforward: a handful of individuals can float a candidacy lacking in more general public support and keep it artificially alive. The costs increase for other candidates; debate stages are crowded with contenders who are not truly viable over the long-term; and the mechanism by which public preference is measured is skewed.
Perhaps for this reason, it goes unnoticed that arguments directly related to government corruption—and proposals for reform based on them—seem, by contrast, increasingly clouded and tenuous.
New York Post: Political donations by charitable groups draw ire, scrutiny
Carl Campanile
Charitable donations that are supposed to aid the needy are ending up in the coffers of politicians — in violation of federal law, The Post has learned.
Dozens of tax-exempt “charitable” groups have steered thousands of dollars to candidates for public office or to political parties, a Post review of Board of Elections filings reveals.
FiveThirtyEight: There’s Top-Heavy Super PACs, And There’s Super Top-Heavy Super PACs
Aaron Bycoffe
Most of the 2016 presidential candidates have at least one super PAC supporting them. And while almost all of those super PACs have raised the majority of their money from a small group of big contributors, there are still some differences among the donor bases.
New York Times: ‘Super PACs’ Spent Millions Before Candidates Announced, Filings Show
Eric Lichtblau
The super PAC supporting Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, for instance, reported the donation of the use of a chartered jet valued at $70,000 from John A. Catsimatidis, the billionaire supermarket owner.
Priorities USA, the super PAC supporting Mrs. Clinton, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers, accountants and political consultants like Paul Begala, a longtime Clinton friend and adviser.
Another committee backing Mr. Cruz went big on fund-raising phone calls, spending $60,000 in a span of a few weeks to ring potential donors for more money, the filings showed.
Washington Post: Charles Koch invokes fight for civil rights as model for political activism
Matea Gold and James Hohmann
The theme of helping the lower class was echoed throughout the weekend conference as network officials laid out their plans to spend $889 million by the end of 2016 on issue advocacy, higher-education grants and political activity. Huge banners positioned around the halls of the resort featured quotes from donors describing their commitment to helping the poor. Mark Holden, the general counsel of Koch Industries, led a 40-minute discussion Sunday afternoon on the network’s push for criminal justice reform at the state and federal levels.
FCC
Huffington Post: Pollsters Worried FCC Chairman Doesn’t Care If They Go Out Of Business
Janie Velencia and Mark Blumenthal
Many pollsters are worried that the small ruling will have outsized impact, making it difficult to gauge public opinion on a wide range of issues. It could “create a political system where politicians can do whatever they want without knowing what the public thinks,” Mollyann Brodie, president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, told The Huffington Post. “It should be of grave concern to both our political leaders and the American public at large.”
Wisconsin John Doe
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Appeal court’s John Doe decision
Matthew Rothschild
Special prosecutor Francis Schmitz has an obligation to appeal the decision by the state Supreme Court to dismiss the John Doe investigation. That decision legalized coordination between candidates and outside groups so long as those groups don’t say “vote for” or “vote against” a certain candidate.
Schmitz has two solid grounds for appealing that order to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The first is that the conservative justices who ruled against him, 4-2, were biased and should have recused themselves.
The second is that those justices misread U.S. Supreme Court precedents on campaign finance law and the First Amendment.
FEC
Politico: Former IRS commissioner files FEC complaint over Fox forum rules
Hadas Gold
Everson alleges that when Fox News dropped the requirement that candidates must poll at least 1 percent in national polls, it violated FEC rules on debates that say debate hosts must use “pre-established objective criteria to determine which candidates may participate in a debate.”
“It is inconsistent and arbitrary to then insist that to be included a candidate must be ‘consistently being offered to respondents in major national polls, as recognized by Fox News.’ I urge you to reconsider this standard,” Everson wrote in a note to Michael Clemente, executive vice president of news at Fox.
Political Parties
CPI: Limits unclear on new political party ‘slush funds’
Carrie Levine
The new money technically must be used only for specific purposes, such as legal expenses and improvements to party headquarters. The limits are, however, murkier than they seem, with some lawyers saying the money could legally pay for some election-related costs such as opposition research and data mining.
And the Federal Election Commission, tasked with regulating and enforcing federal campaign finance laws, is at an impasse over whether and how to issue rules governing the new party accounts. As a result, decisions about spending the money are pretty much up to the parties and their lawyers.
Candidates and Campaigns
Washington Free Beacon: Dark Money Floods into Hillary Super PAC
Lachlan Markay
Fair Share Action (FSA) donated $1 million to pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA Action in late June, one of eight million-dollar contributions the pro-Clinton group has received so far this year from various sources.
FSA also gave $5,000 to another pro-Clinton super PAC in April.
The source of FSA’s money is nearly impossible to trace. It’s received just two contributions this year: $300,000 from Fair Share Inc., its 501(c)(4) dark money affiliate, and $800,000 from another dark money group called Environment America…
Priorities USA Action is legally prohibited from coordinating with the Clinton campaign, but is expected to play a major role in boosting her candidacy.
The Intercept: Clinton, Asked What She’ll Do About Money in Politics, Explains “Mrrph Blvvvr Lrrrrg”
Jon Schwarz
The most notable thing Clinton said was that she would “do everything I can” to appoint Supreme Court justices who would reverse not just 2010’s Citizens United decision but the earlier 1975 campaign finance case Buckley v. Valeo. Buckley struck down limits on overall campaign spending by candidates as violations of the First Amendment, and laid the groundwork for Citizens United as well as another crucial case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.
