In the News
PJ Media: Kim Strassel: The Left’s War on Free Speech ‘Goes Beyond Bullying’
Tyler O’Neil
The Wall Street Journal editor explained that there is a connection between spending money and getting your message out, and she argued that “the Left loves to regulate money in politics, because that’s a way of regulating their opponents.” If free speech cases like Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission are overturned, “the government can decide who can spend money in elections, which is the same as saying who can speak in elections.”
“When you hear ‘campaign finance reform’ or ‘dark money,’ [the Left] is trying to silence you,” declared Matt Nese, director of external relations at the Center for Competitive Politics. He defended each American’s right to donate to political causes, explaining that giving money is another way of speaking out for what you believe in.
American Clarion: Defeat 22 Kickoff in Rapid City
Bob Ellis
The measure also calls for an “ethics commission” to examine matters of ethics in government. While this sounds good in theory, the members will be unelected and thus unaccountable to the people, and will likely be comprised of members who are just as partisan as they would be if they came to hold those positions through other means.
IM 22 would also place additional requirements on political speech that would likely have a chilling effect on freedom of speech.
Rhoden invited attendees to read an analysis on the measure done by the Center for Competitive Politics.
Effectiveness of Campaign Spending
WGBH Boston: Can Money Control An Election?
Tyler O’Neil
Can the almighty dollar really control an election? FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman explained what’s working and what’s not in our campaign finance system.
They discussed the amount of money spent, so far, this election. Goodman said that this election cycle has had the most money spent, ever. Looking at 2012, and counting all congressional and presidential money, 7.6 billion dollars were spent, said Goodman…
Goodman said that while many argue that money is going to buy the election, most super PAC money is ineffective. He cited Bush and Rubio’s failed campaigns as examples of failed super PAC money.
Independent Groups
Federalist: Enviro Megadonor Wants To Ban Mega Donations From Everyone Else
Bre Payton
Steyer, who was the top political contributor in 2014 and is currently again in 2016, likes to complain about how “the other side” is using their money for evil via Citizens United.
When asked how much money he was planning to spend in this current election cycle, Steyer responded: “we believe Citizens United was a terrible decision. We believe that it should be overturned. We believe there’s too much emphasis on money in politics.”…
Ironically, overturning Citizens United would have little to no impact on Steyer’s personal superPAC, NextGen Climate Action. Because Steyer has personally provided nearly 70 percent of NextGen’s funding, changing the rules on what political activities corporations and unions can spend money on wouldn’t significantly affect his own superPAC.
Mother Jones: Super-PAC Works to Elect Hillary Clinton One Community at a Time
Pema Levy
The Local Voices team believes that its messages will have more of an impact coming from within the community, rather than in national or statewide ads. “We’re just trying to give voice to real voters,” says Lee Hirsch, a documentary filmmaker who started the group back in 2008 to help elect Barack Obama, “in the hopes that that will cut through, because you’re seeing somebody in your community, you’re seeing the streets of your community, you’re seeing businesses in your community in these spots.
Bloomberg: Super-PAC Telegraphs Battleground Strategy to Clinton Campaign
Sasha Issenberg
The League of Conservation Voters’ super-PAC can not legally share its plans with candidates it wants to help, but Hillary Clinton’s staff will still be able to learn, with a surprising degree of precision, the names of each of the almost 970,000 voters whose doors it plans to knock before the first of its canvassers has even approached a doorstep.
In announcing its plans for an “aggressive $4.2 million persuasion canvass” across three states—Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina—the LCV Victory Fund has taken the unusual step of including in a press release the specific ranges of microtargeting scores that define the voters it will attempt to sway in Clinton’s favor and against Trump. It amounts to a direct and precise signal to Clinton’s campaign, state parties and other super-PACs not to bother duplicating those efforts, or perhaps to layer on specific digital or direct-mail communication targeting those individual voters.
ABC News: How Campaign Finance Has Evolved Over Time
Meghan Keneally
Campaign finance is often seen as a murky, controversial world that helps bankroll ever-lengthening presidential races.
Political Action Committees, or PACs, and their later iteration, super PACS, dominate the campaign finance funding now, but that wasn’t always the case.
The beginnings of PACs date back to unions and how they initially directed portions of their members’ dues towards political campaigns, but after that spending plan got squashed, they later created PACs as the way around the new law.
Media
Daily Beast: The Mainstream Media Has a Donald J. Trump-Sized Blind Spot
Michael Tracey
The total paucity of avowed Trump supporters in elite spheres—including prestige media outlets, think tanks and academic institutions—has created an unprecedented imbalance in our electoral politics. During any given week this summer, commentators might have charged Trump with committing treason (a crime punishable by death), seeking to carry out mass genocide, being clinically insane, or chomping at the bit to instigate civilization-destroying nuclear war—not to mention secretly working to undermine the entire American system of government at the behest of Russia’s dastardly leader. Such extreme besmirchments have become so common now that they seldom even raise an eyebrow.
Of course, given his penchant for inflammatory blather, Trump himself bears plenty of responsibility for provoking some histrionic name-calling. But even so, when a presidential candidate nominated by one of the two major parties can be called a literal traitor and virtually nobody within the domains that traditionally regulate mainstream public discourse feels compelled to come out and object—something’s off.
SEC
Wall Street Journal: Big Banks Don’t Follow Goldman on Trump Donation Ban
John Carney and Liz Hoffman
In addition, there has been concern within Goldman about “look-back” provisions in the rules. Even if an employee who isn’t covered makes a donation, this could later become an issue if that staffer moves into an area that is covered by pay-to-play rules, such as within certain areas of the firm’s municipal-bond or asset-management businesses. That has become more of a concern as employees move into the asset-management business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Rivals aren’t being as strict. Instead of applying a ban to all senior staff, other banks are following longstanding policies of evaluating whether a particular individual’s role would make a proposed contribution a breach of pay-to-play rules.
Free Speech
Manchester Union Leader: We need to speak up for free speech
John Stossel
Donald Trump tells reporters, “We’re going to have people sue you like you never got sued before.”
Hillary Clinton doesn’t like her opponents funding documentaries that criticize her, so she demands Congress overturn the Supreme Court decision that allows it.
The world is full of people who want their enemies to shut up. Some college students get so upset seeing “Trump 2016” chalked on sidewalks that they call the police, demanding the chalkers be punished and their words erased.
But because America’s founders added, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” to the Constitution, the police have no role here.
IRS
Wall Street Journal: House Republicans Weigh Impeaching IRS Commissioner John Koskinen
Richard Rubin
Lawmakers are debating how far to go as they weigh the political risks of irritating some of their most ardent supporters with any vote that even resembles letting Mr. Koskinen off the hook. What is giving them pause about impeachment are conservatives’ push to bypass the Judiciary Committee and the slim chances of removing Mr. Koskinen from office. That would require Senate Republicans to overcome their reluctance and also attract more than 20 Democratic votes—the number needed to get the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate—making it a clear dead end.
Candidates and Campaigns
Wall Street Journal: Trump Pushes to Repeal Little-Used Ban on Church Endorsements
Beth Reinhard and Richard Rubin
He is calling for the repeal of a decades-old section of the federal tax code known as the Johnson Amendment, named after former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who as a U.S. senator spearheaded the ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt organizations such as churches.
Mr. Trump is the first GOP nominee to make the law a major campaign issue, religious leaders say, and he’s expected to raise the issue when he addresses hundreds of “values voters” at a convention Friday in Washington, D.C., organized by the Family Research Council.
“You’ve been totally silenced, silenced like a child,” Mr. Trump told a gathering of pastors in Orlando last month.
The States
Lowell Sun: Mass. conservative group drops mailers following change in disclosure law
Matt Murphy
The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, a conservative-leaning non-profit, will not be sending out its familiar, but controversial campaign mailers this year after the Legislature passed a law that would require disclosure of the group’s top five donors on that type of campaign literature…
The new law, passed at the close of the two-year formal session in July, requires disclosure of top donors for any “independent expenditure or electioneering communication” made via direct mail or billboard, an expansion of a previous law targeting television and print ads.
Electioneering communications, according to the Office of Campaign and Political Finance, refer to a “clearly identifiable” candidate and are distributed within 90 days of an election in which that candidate is running.
Los Angeles Times: This 224-page California voter guide is heftiest one ever, thanks to 17 ballot measures
John Myers
The information booklet covers all 17 statewide ballot propositions, a document that election officials believe is the most voluminous election guide in California history. And it hasn’t come cheap: The total cost for printing and mailing, done in Sacramento and taking seven weeks to complete, will come close to $15 million…
“On election day every voting Californian is a lawmaker,” said Secretary of State Alex Padilla.
This fall, voters are being asked to wade through some of the most complex laws ever proposed, initiatives with details so granular that they could easily confound all but the most expert legal minds.
