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Disclosure
By Michael Waldman – 06/20/08
An edited version of this posting appeared as a guest post on the Anderson Cooper 360 blog June 20.
Barack Obama's decision to opt out of public funding for the general election is not a surprise. It was so well telegraphed, he should take out a patent.
The presidential public funding system worked well for three decades after it was enacted in the early 1970s. It leveled the playing field, boosted competition and reduced corruption. Think of it this way: in the first five elections under presidential public funding, a challenger beat an incumbent president three times. There's no congressional district in America with that much competition!
But the presidential system needs repair, for reasons among those prompting Obama to turn away the federal funds. Principally, candidates simply don't get enough money to mount a fully strong race in a modern election. The amount, when it was set, was about two thirds of the amount spent by the McGovern campaign of 1972—in other words, two thirds of the least successful presidential campaign in modern history!
The real question is what will Barack Obama—or John McCain—do to reform the system when one of them takes office?
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Contribution Limits, Other Reforms, Disclosure, Public Financing
By Kelly Williams – 06/16/08
Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff will be sentenced this September, according to papers filed by prosecutors and defense attorneys this week in federal court. Mr. Abramoff has been safely tucked away in a federal prison camp in Maryland since 2006 on bank fraud charges. Congress reacted to the scandal by passing reform legislation: This past January 1, the
Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA) of 2007 went into effect, requiring more substantive and accessible disclosure of political and charitable contributions by registered lobbyists, among other changes. The first reports of these contributions are due on July 30 and should make for interesting reading.
With reform legislation in place and Mr. Abramoff's expense account out of reach, one might be tempted to breath a sigh of relief. One piece of this important legislation has yet to be implemented, however—HLOGA required the FEC to adopt rules for disclosing "bundling" by lobbyists. "Bundling" is the gathering of checks from multiple donors otherwise meeting the requirements of law which are then turned over "in bulk" to politicians—the virtues and risks of this practice should be self-evident to those who care about meaningful campaign finance reform. The lack of a quorum at the FEC has prevented the adoption of the rules, effectively neutering this part of the only ethics reform legislation to come out of Congress in recent years. True reformers should insist that passage of these rules is at the top of the agenda of a reinvigorated FEC.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Contribution Limits, Other Reforms, Disclosure
By Laura MacCleery – 06/13/08
Some cases are just too ugly even
for the Supreme Court, it appears. Last week it refused to grant review to a
claim from Washington State that challenged an important principle: the
requirement that outside groups disclose their electoral spending.
The group in question, called the
Voters Education Committee (VEC), was a classic astroturf 527 group (named thus
for a section of the tax code), that omitted to register with the state as a
political committee. Its one donor—the Chamber of Commerce—funneled it a
whopping $1.5 million as part of a 25-state campaign in 2004 to push
its agenda in key Attorney General and state Supreme Court races around
the country.
Read the rest of this story ...
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Other Reforms, Disclosure
By Laura MacCleery – 03/27/08
(Cross-posted from The Hill Blog)
Recent weeks have seen a ratcheting up of promises by outside groups to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the presidential race. On the right, $2 million is expected from a conservative 501(c)(4) called "Defense of Democracies" for election-related opposition to House Democrats who oppose the President's electronic spying plan. Another non-profit, Freedom's Watch has pledged to spend some $250 million opposing the Democratic nominee.
And progressive groups recently floated a $400 million target for both electioneering communications and voter mobilization efforts. While the Campaign Finance Institute reports that a record $143 million was spent in 2006, that then-shocking total today looks like chump change.
A short history of how we got here is in order. As a new legal analysis and summary by the Brennan Center makes clear, before passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ("BCRA"), campaign finance laws applied only to "express advocacy" - an advertisement for or against a candidate that used specific "magic words," such as "vote for" or "vote against." This test made it impossible to distinguish "sham issue ads" (ads that avoided these magic words, but were nonetheless intended to influence an election) from genuine issue ads (ads that advance a position on a public issue)...
Continue reading this piece at The Hill Blog.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Contribution Limits, Other Reforms, Disclosure, Public Financing
By Deborah Goldberg – 03/18/08
In honor of Sunshine Week, the National Institute on Money in State Politics, has launched its Legislative Committee Analysis Tool, or CAT, which organizes campaign-finance data by the major legislative committees in each state. Here's an example of what you can find. This new tool uses Project Vote Smart's APIs for committee assignments. (The Institute's own APIs are here.) NIMSP also links to candidate biographies. Look for links to candidate scorecards and bills shortly.
Next up for folks who focus on money in state politics: zip code lookups paired with Legislative District Boundary Maps and analyses; a 50-state Lobbyist Link tool that will show where lobbyists are focusing their giving.
Deborah Goldberg is the Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center. She also serves on the board of the NIMSP.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Disclosure
By Deborah Goldberg – 02/15/08
There's been a lot of talk lately about whether presidential candidates Obama and McCain
have a "deal" to accept public funding if they are their parties'
nominees. What we should be talking
about is why a "deal" has become necessary and why there is a serious risk
that, if it ever existed, it will collapse under the weight of private money
flooding the campaigns. We also should
be talking about what it means for our country that our leaders—President,
Senators, Members of the House of Representatives—are dependent on funds raised
from wealthy individuals and special interests to run for office.
For many years, every major-party candidate for president
opted into our presidential public funding system to run his campaign. There was no need to cut a deal. There was enough money provided through the
system to ensure that the candidates could vigorously compete.
The presidential public funding system freed the candidates
from the endless money chase. They could
spend their time talking to voters—and maybe even listening to them!—instead of
ingratiating themselves to a minute clique of wealthy contributors with
not-so-hidden agendas. Because rich
donors could not claim credit for the winner's success, there was reason to hope
that the President would consult the interests of ordinary Americans when
making national policy decisions.
Granted, some of the current candidates are less dependent
on deep pockets than others. But research released by the Campaign Finance Institute shows that, as of the end of 2007, only
one candidate had raised even half of his funds from small donors-and he's not
part of the "deal." When all of a candidates' funds come from
small donors or public financing, we'll have a lot less concern about who is
likely to be pulling the policy strings.
It is a simple matter to update the presidential public
funding system provides so that it can provide the resources necessary for
competitive campaigns. There is already
a bill that will
do the job. There is also a bill that
would provide public funding for U.S. Senate, and there soon will be a House companion. If our leaders can reach office without debts
to donors, they are in a much better position to hear the voices of
voters.
The hope that our next President will listen to us should
not be dependent upon a "deal" between two major contenders. The candidates' "deal" should be with the
people. That is what democracy is all
about.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Contribution Limits, Other Reforms, Disclosure, Public Financing
By Laura MacCleery – 02/13/08
Today's
Roll Call editorial on campaign finance problems
dodged and weaved where it should have illuminated. It also portends that we may soon be dealing with a dangerous new threat from a stealth campaign, only a few years after passage of the
Bi-Partisan Campaign Finance Reform Act (BCRA), to once again raise contribution limits.
While we agree that electioneering activity should be regulated, we are not at all interested in getting there at the cost of an increase in contribution limits for money given directly to candidates. Both 527s and the behemoth 501cs that can easily comply can and should be regulated as PACs. That has little to do with contribution limits, despite Roll Call's straining to make it so.
Given the unprecedented flow of both small and large money into campaign coffers this year, totaling nearly $500 million thus far, the audacity of asking for yet more bling is rather breathtaking. The Roll Call piece suggests that some may be floating the idea of trading more regulation of PAC-like electioneering activity for an increase in limits. That is a terrible idea.
The solution to the problem of special interest money in politics is not to have more special interest money. The real answer here is a robust system of public funding of elections. Public funding enables viable candidates to stand on their own two feet and mount a real campaign that is not dependent on special interest monies. No one step could be more helpful to weaning American elections off their addiction to private cash.
The reform community should make sure to pop this trial balloon with a loud bang. Our choice is not between the rock of electioneering by independent groups and the hard place of more power to the PACs. Instead, we need a third way, and voluntary public funding is that way.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Contribution Limits, Other Reforms, Disclosure
By Ciara Torres-Spelliscy – 12/26/07
* Cross posted from the Huffington Post
Like the Greeks mounting assault after assault on Troy, James Bopp ceaselessly assails federal campaign finance law in an attempt to destroy it. In the summer of 2007, Bopp delivered his Trojan horse: a clever attack on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA also known as McCain-Feingold) to the Supreme Court by a group called Wisconsin Right to Life. The decision under the new conservative Court gutted BCRA's restrictions on corporate spending on campaign ads aired directly before federal elections.
Now Bopp is aiming to dismantle one of the main pillars of campaign finance regulation with a conservative front group ironically named Citizen United. This time Bopp has targeted BCRA's rule requiring disclosure of who is paying for political advertisements. This attack is even more fundamental than the last. Without disclosure of who is paying for an ad, it would be impossible for voters to properly assess the meaning of the message. An ad about a candidate's stance on the environment would be viewed more skeptically by voters if they knew the ad was paid for by Exxon Mobil. If Americans are robbed of this key information, voters could easily be misled and informed democratic choice would disappear.
Bopp and his ilk wrap themselves in the First Amendment and claim to be battling for the public good. But what they are really doing is pushing subterfuge. A democracy needs clear and candid information about campaign sources of cash, including who ponied up the big bucks to buy an election attack ad.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Disclosure
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