Blog
NY Reform
By ReformNY – 03/30/12
Crossposted at ReformNY
Every Friday, the Brennan Center will be compiling the latest news concerning the corrosive nature of money in New York State politics—and the ongoing need for public financing and robust campaign finance reform. We’ll also be linking to dispatches from around the country highlighting the national scope of this crisis. This week’s links were contributed by Matthew Ladd.
For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtag #moNeYpolitics and #fairelex.
New York Campaign Finance and Ethics News
1. New York’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics released its 2011 lobbying report this week, which found that the lobbying industry spent a record sum of $220 million last year in its efforts to influence state legislators. As JCOPE’s Executive Director Ellen Biben noted, “Apparently lobbying is recession proof.” The full report can be read here.
2. While JCOPE is an improvement on its predecessor, the ethics enforcement agency was criticized this week for neglecting to focus on legislators’ behavior in their home districts—for instance, Pedro Espada’s embezzlement scandal, which occurred not in Albany but in Espada’s home district in the Bronx.
3. Bill Mahoney of NY PIRG writes in Wednesday’s Times Union that in order for a public campaign financing program to succeed in New York state, it must be accompanied by an overhaul of the state’s current ineffective system. Comprehensive campaign finance reform in New York, Mahoney writes, must also include closing the loophole on “housekeeping” contributions to party committees, setting up regular audits of candidate’s campaign accounts, and giving stronger enforcement power to the state’s toothless Board of Elections.
4. Former Bloomberg aide and convicted felon John Haggerty still has friends in New York: the Daily News reports that three former aides to ex-Gov. Pataki have created a legal defense fund to pay his attorneys. While legal, the defense fund raises ethical questions concerning responses in Albany to illegal conduct by those working in government. Haggerty was sentenced last December to up to four years on charges of money laundering and grand larceny, for his siphoning $750,000 from election funds to buy a house in Queens.
5. US Representative Charles Rangel (D—NY), who was found guilty in 2010 of eleven ethics violations by the House Ethics Committee, is making headlines again. Rangel and his campaign have paid a $23,000 civil fine after it emerged that he used a rent-stabilized apartment as a campaign office, which effectively amounts to acceptance of campaign contributions beyond the legal limit.
National Campaign Finance News
1. The US Senate held a legislative hearing this week on the DISCLOSE Act of 2012, a bipartisan bill that would create more detailed disclosure requirements for super PACs, corporate donors, unions and other politically active organizations. In the face of Republican opposition to the bill, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) declared that the flood of spending unleashed by Citizens United “corrodes the very essence of our democracy.” The announcement of the hearing on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration includes a webcast of the hearing, and testimony offered by the Brennan Center for Justice in support of the DISCLOSE Act can be read here.
2. Prior to the Senate hearing, Public Campaign pointed out that although votes on a similar bill from 2010 fell along party lines, several Republican senators have publicly supported heightened transparency requirements for large campaign donors at earlier points in their careers, “when transparency wasn’t a dirty word.”
3. The New York Times opened this week with two hard-hitting editorials on campaign finance and legislative ethics. Sunday’s Times pointed out that the floodgates opened in 2010 by Citizens United have resulted in more than $92 million dollars of outside spending during the current election season—more than double the amount spent by outside groups during the same period in 2008, and six times the amount spent in 2004. The misguided ruling has not only “allowed wealthy organizations and individuals to drown out other voices in the campaign,” but has also set a dangerous precedent by narrowing the definition of corruption to include only bribery, a characterization that is “intellectually dishonest,” since “the broader problem is the ability of moneyed interests to put into office those who support their political agendas or financial interests.”
4. Monday’s Times called attention to a related problem: super PAC spending may allow some federal government contractors to indirectly contribute to political campaigns, which would violate a ban on contractor contributions that has stood since 1940. Although many super PACs still adhere to the decades-old ban, the Times reports that Mitt Romney’s super PAC has accepted donations totaling nearly $900,000 from at least five separate government contractors, a decision whose legality is uncertain given “the new unregulated, unlimited jungle of campaign finance” created by Citizens United.
5. To mark the ten-year anniversary of the passage of his 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, Senator John McCain stated in an interview that Citizens United has left parts of the bill in tatters, and that the consequences of the Supreme Court’s ruling “are manifesting themselves every day in what will someday be, sooner rather than later, a huge scandal.” BCRA co-sponsor and former senator Russ Feingold was similarly critical, declaring that Citizens United “has turned the election system into a joke.”
6. An Associated Press review of Mitt Romney’s campaign contribution records sheds some much-needed light on the “bundlers” who have steered millions of dollars to Romney’s war chest, and whose identities the Romney campaign has declined to make public. Although federal law only requires disclosure of bundlers who are also registered lobbyists, both GOP and Democratic presidential candidates have traditionally disclosed the identities of their top fundraisers. The Romney campaign is a rare holdout.
7. Partisan gridlock and bureaucratic inertia have rendered the FEC increasingly unable to exercise its enforcement power, Politico reports, finding that the FEC’s inaction has left “campaigns and super PACs to test the boundaries of the new campaign finance world” with little fear of effective oversight by the federal government. The Campaign Legal Center compared the FEC commissioners to “the cops in the doughnut shop” for their chronic inaction.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Public Financing, NY Reform
By ReformNY – 03/23/12
Crossposted at ReformNY.
Every Friday, the Brennan Center will be compiling the latest news concerning the corrosive nature of money in New York State politics—and the ongoing need for public financing and robust campaign finance reform. We’ll also be linking to dispatches from around the country highlighting the national scope of this crisis. This week’s links were contributed by Matthew Ladd and Dan Rockoff.
For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtag #moNeYpolitics and #fairelex.
New York Campaign Finance and Ethics News
1. The latest Newsday op-ed to call for public financing in New York state, by Make the Road New York member and community organizer Maria Magdalena Flores, explains why public financing is needed to combat apathy among working-class and minority voters. Flores offers some startling statistics: in the most recent state elections for New York assembly, state senate and governor, a mere 6% of contributions came from donors giving $250 or less, compared to a whopping 64% in the last city council elections. New York City’s public financing program has opened the door “for meaningful participation from working-class communities,” resulting in a city council that is not only more racially and economically diverse, but that is also better positioned to represent the interests of ordinary New Yorkers.
2. On Thursday, the Times Union editorial board strongly urged Gov. Cuomo to continue pushing for campaign finance reform, especially in light of its harsh criticisms of last week’s redistricting deal. New York’s campaign finance laws are “embarrassingly weak,” creating a regime that invites abuse and lets “the special interests overwhelm ordinary voters.”
3. The results of a nationwide State Integrity Investigation conducted by the Center for Public Integrity were published this week, giving New York an overall grade of D, ranking it 36 out of the 50 states (based on a numerical score of 65 out of 100), and issuing D or F grades for its handling of ethics enforcement, political financing, and state budget processes, among other areas. The full report card can be found here. The least corrupt state? New Jersey. In the wake of the investigation’s findings, the Times Union argues that a voluntary matching funds system, similar to New York City’s public financing program, remains “the only way to limit the power of big campaign checks,” and that Albany’s dismally low grade is simply “one more indication of the broken system of campaign finance in Albany that puts the interests of CEO campaign contributors before the interests of our communities.”
4. The state report accompanying New York’s report card singles out the ineffectual State Board of Elections for special criticism. The report card cites NY PIRG’s Bill Mahoney for the view that the Board is underfinanced, understaffed, and unable to enforce its regulations, and concludes that “the 19.5 million citizens of the Empire State can agree on one thing: Albany is defined by dysfunction and corruption.” The State Integrity Investigation also highlights another anti-corruption report, jointly published in February by the University of Illinois political science department and its Institute for Government and Public Affairs, finding that New York’s number of federal public corruption convictions since 1976—over 2,500 and counting—is the highest in the nation.
5. As if to illustrate the findings of the State Integrity Investigation, the federal corruption trial of former state Senator Pedro Espada, Jr., continued this week, with Judge Frederic Block excoriating Espada’s attorney for using questionable courtroom tactics, and with Espada characterized during trial as a “puppet master” for his alleged embezzlement of funds from the Soundview Healthcare Network. The Times reports that more than a dozen witnesses testified on Thursday that Espada had paid them for personal services with funds from a subsidiary of Soundview.
National Campaign Finance News
1. A New York Times editorial this week blasted the Campaign for Primary Accountability, a super PAC that has raised nearly $1.8 million with the stated purpose of defeating long-serving incumbents in both parties. As the Times pointed out, while political entrenchment is a problem given partisan gerrymandering, this is a case where the end does not justify the means. Super PACs give corporations and the wealthy disproportionate influence: for instance, 95% of the money donated to the Campaign for Primary Accountability comes from just “four wealthy men with conservative bents.”
2. As the Republican presidential primaries continue into the spring, the remaining candidates are maxing out their donors and may be unable to sustain their current spending levels, allowing super PAC spending to drive their campaigns. For example, Mitt Romney’s super PAC Restore Our Future, which is overwhelmingly funded by just a handful of wealthy individuals, spent more than $12 million in February on attack ads.
3. Payday lending companies contributed more than a quarter of a million dollars last month to Mitt Romney’s super PAC Restore Our Future, a finding that emerged as major payday lenders are drawing heightened scrutiny from federal regulators at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Romney campaign refused to comment on the specific contributions.
4. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney fended off criticism this week that President Obama spends too much time fundraising, arguing that the President spends the “vast preponderance” of his time on official duties. The incident serves as a reminder that 2012 presidential election will likely be the most expensive in history, which creates additional costs for the voting public: less time for public officials to focus on the interests of their constituents. For reformers and public officials alike, this should suggest the growing need for public financing of elections.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Public Financing, NY Reform
By John Travis – 03/22/12
Crossposted at ReformNY.
Although both sides have declared victory, the race to replace State Senator Carl Krueger remains too close to call. The preliminary results released by the Board of Elections show David Storobin with a 143 vote lead over Lew Fidler. While several news outlets have focused on the 757 absentee ballots which remain to be counted, recent anomalies with New York's voting machines show that in a very close contest, only a hand count can ensure that the right contestant has won.
Just last month, the results of an upstate City Council race declared to have been won by challenger Augustine Beyer by a single vote were overturned after a full hand recount revealed a two-vote discrepancy that tilted the race in incumbent Richard Slisz’s favor. The voting machine was unable to read one improperly marked ballot where the voting oval had been circled rather than filled in. The hand inspection was enough for election officials to determine that the voter's intent had been to vote for Mr. Slisz. Perhaps more troubling however, was the second ballot with a vote for Mr. Slisz’s that was never scanned or registered by the machine at all.
Furthermore, the results from a Daily News investigation into the exceptionally high overvote rates the Brennan Center uncovered in the South Bronx indicate that these voting machines are far from infallible. The Daily News found that one of the machines used to scan ballots in the South Bronx made errors in reading nearly 70 percent of ballots during the September 2010 primary.
In our report analyzing overvote rates in New York, we listed one of the precincts in Mr. Kruger’s district — AD 46, ED 051— as having Brooklyn’s 8th highest overvote rate in 2010. Many other precincts in this senate district did not provide any data at all, but given the demographics of the district, it seems likely that there were other precincts with high overvote rates both in 2010 and 2012. In some of those cases, voter intent may be clear to the human eye, but not a machine.
Unfortunately, New York City does not publish the number overvotes — as is done in Rockland County— making it virtually impossible for anyone outside the Board of Elections to identify areas where voting machines have registered high rates of uncounted votes.
A provision adopted by the City Board of Elections requires a hand recount of paper ballots in contests where the margin of victory is less than 10 votes or half a percent of the total votes cast. Given the newness of these machines and recent history, even a margin slightly higher may warrant a careful hand recount to ensure that the actual winner is declared the victor. If a recount does happen, look for totals (and maybe even the declared winner) to change.
Tags: Democracy, NY Reform, Voting Rights & Elections, Ballot & Election Material Design, Voting Technology
By John Travis – 03/16/12
Crossposted at ReformNY
Over 311 legislative proposals were killed in one fell swoop in Albany this week, after the Senate majority adopted a new method to stall legislation: refer all bills where a motion for committee consideration has been filed to the Rules Committee, where they can be ignored.
The new strategy lets them circumvent a senate rule designed to allow rank-and-file senators to force a committee vote on their bills over the objection of leadership.
The rule on motions for committee consideration was first introduced in 2009 by a Democratic majority and passed again by a Republican majority in 2011. The new rule was intended to increase the ability of rank-and-file members to move their bills out of committee by forcing chairs to place the bill on the committee agenda and schedule a vote. This replaced the Senate’s earlier rule on discharge motions which allowed a chair to stall a bill even if the bill had enough support to pass.
According to a three-paragraph letter, sent to committee chairs Tuesday morning, the Temporary President of the Senate “may at any time refer bills to the Rules Committee,” and at the request of the Temporary President, “any pending motions for committee consideration have been discharged from the respective committee and committed to the Rules Committee.”
A search through the legislative research service reveals that an astonishing 311 bills were sent to the rules committee on March 12, 2012.
This action goes against the spirit of greater transparency and accountability that the new rules were meant to accomplish. A 2009 joint statement which included then-Senate President Malcolm A. Smith and Minority Leader Dean Skelos, touted how these rules would increase the power of rank-and-file members. “No longer will the Senate be run by leaders making all the decisions,” the statement said.
Moreover, in summarizing how the new rules-- including the new motion for committee consideration– would strengthen the committee process, the statement added that “these changes will give greater power and authority to individual committee chairs and members so they can consider, judge and act on legislation independent of leadership.”
It’s disheartening to see how the majority has distorted the rules. The ability to kill 311 bills in a single day speaks to how truly “independent of leadership” the Senate has become.
Tags: NY Reform
By ReformNY – 03/16/12
Crossposted at ReformNY.
Every Friday, the Brennan Center will be compiling the latest news concerning the corrosive nature of money in New York State politics—and the ongoing need for public financing and robust campaign finance reform. We’ll also be linking to dispatches from around the country highlighting the national scope of this crisis. This week’s links were contributed by Matthew Ladd.
For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtag #moNeYpolitics and #fairelex.
New York Campaign Finance and Ethics News
1. Former State Congressman Mike Arcuri expressed his strong support this week for a state system of public campaign financing. Arcuri, a member of the NY LEAD coalition, wrote that such a system would put regular voters back “in the driver’s seat.” Arcuri also decried Albany’s “culture of dependence on large campaign contributions,” describing it as a corrosive and expensive practice that reduces public faith in state government.
2. Opening arguments began this week in the federal corruption trial of Pedro Espada, Jr., and his son Pedro Gautier Espada, who are accused of using the Soundview Healthcare Network as “their own taxpayer-funded piggy bank” by funneling more than $500,000 from the organization and spending it on cars, spa treatments, and other personal luxuries. The former state Senate Majority Leader and his son are charged with theft, embezzlement, and misapplication of federal funds, as well as conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
3. Evidence introduced in the ongoing corruption and bribery trial of former Yonkers Councilwoman Sandy Annabi has cast the spotlight on another public official: state Senator Tom Libous, who, according to witness testimony, pushed a law firm to hire his son—and inflate his starting salary—in exchange for steering government business toward the firm’s practice.
National Campaign Finance News
1. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released this week shows that nearly 70% of Americans believe that super PACs should be illegal. The poll also found that broad bipartisan support for banning super PACs: the level of opposition to super PACs by Democrats (70%) and Tea Party supporters (69%) was nearly identical, and well over half of Republicans (55%) favored banning the groups as well. Additionally, of the 69% polled who believed that super PACs should be banned, over half felt “very strongly” about the issue—an indication that Citizens United is squarely at odds with public opinion on corporate campaign spending.
2. A nationwide coalition of campaign finance reform groups called this week for all presidential candidates, including President Obama and the four remaining Republican primary contenders, to reveal the names of their major “bundlers,” the fundraisers who steer millions of dollars to campaign war chests. Although federal law only requires presidential candidates to disclose the names of bundlers who are also registered lobbyists, major candidates in both parties disclosed other bundlers as well during the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections—a practice currently followed only by the President. The coalition letters to individual candidates are available here.
3. The AFL-CIO Executive Council released a statement on Wednesday that roundly condemned the flood of corporate spending unleashed by Citizens United, praised current efforts at campaign finance reform, and threw its support behind public campaign financing as an effective way to “enfranchise voters and ensure that wealth does not yield disproportionate influence.” The AFL-CIO also called for greater disclosure of corporate contributions and campaign expenditures, better contribution limits for wealthy individuals, and other reform efforts “to bring about greater fairness, openness and participation in elections.”
4. The Washington Post finds that candidate and campaign spending during the GOP primary has been cut in half since the last presidential primary, and that the influence of super PAC spending has been amplified by weak fundraising. According to David Donnelly of the Public Campaign Action Fund, traditional fundraising has been supplanted by “this new phenomenon of people writing huge checks in support of the candidates. You’re replacing excitement with those who have a huge amount of money.”
5. The downturn in GOP primary fundraising from small individual donors can also be attributed to sky-high contributions by corporations and wealthy backers, argues Nick Nyhart of Public Campaign, who finds that Republican super PACs, and billionaire backers such as Sheldon Adelson and Foster Friess, may reduce contributions from ordinary citizens. “It sends a bad message to ordinary voters,” Nyhart said. “You begin to feel like politics is a playing field that only millionaires and billionaires are allowed on.”
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Public Financing, NY Reform
By ReformNY – 03/09/12
Crossposted at ReformNY.
Every Friday, the Brennan Center will be compiling the latest news concerning the corrosive nature of money in New York State politics—and the ongoing need for public financing and robust campaign finance reform. We’ll also be linking to dispatches from around the country highlighting the national scope of this crisis. This week’s links were contributed by Matthew Ladd.
For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtag #moNeYpolitics and #fairelex.
New York Campaign Finance and Ethics News
1. Amidst the media’s recent focus on independent redistricting, New York City Council member Dan Garodnick encourages New Yorkers not to lose sight of the importance of campaign finance reform, highlighting the many benefits that the New York City public matching funds system has created for small donors, candidates for public office, and the voting public. Last week, Garodnick and 26 other City Council members sent a letter to Gov. Cuomo in support of his renewed pledge to support a statewide bill for public campaign financing.
2. Former US Representative Anthony Weiner claimed in an interview late last week that in the fall of 2010, he was privy to allegations that current Representative Michael Grimm (R—NY)—who has lately come under scrutiny for accepting questionable campaign donations—was himself attempting to extort political contributions from a well-known rabbi. Grimm’s attorney promptly released a statement denying the allegations, calling Weiner’s remarks part of a “Democratic smear campaign.”
3. The Republican candidate for the vacant seat of the New York State Assembly’s 145th District, Mickey Kearns, is facing a formal complaint that he violated state campaign laws by accepting individual and corporate contributions for the upcoming special election over the legal limit. How the complaint will be handled by the state Board of Elections, whose enforcement power is widely seen as ineffectual, remains to be seen.
National Campaign Finance News
1. “Even in an age of super PACs . . . small-dollar fund-raising matters: It provides not only cash, but a way to engage volunteers, measure enthusiasm and organize get-out-the-vote efforts.” According to the New York Times, this explains a critical vulnerability of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, which has “relied overwhelmingly on his network of high-dollar donors.” By contrast, both Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich enjoyed bursts of small-donor enthusiasm following their primary victories. Unlike his competitors, Romney has failed to connect with grassroots donors, in large part due to widespread perception that Romney’s wealth obviates the need for contributions from small donors.
2. The Washington Post, however, notes that far from relying on small donors, the Santorum and Gingrich campaigns have been “kept on life support by billionaire supporters,” namely Foster Friess and Sheldon Adelson, “who have taken advantage of changes in campaign law to pour millions into independent super PACs.”
3. The Times also opined on Sunday that the upcoming presidential election will be heavily influenced not only by the economy, but also by “the huge sums of money sloshing around” in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United, and that this flood of contributions has led to the most negative Republican primary since the Watergate scandal broke.
4. John Boehner’s decision on Saturday to share the fundraising stage in Florida with Representative Vern Buchanan, who is currently under federal investigation by the FBI and IRS for failure to disclose business holdings and raising campaign money through straw donations, did not escape the Times editorial board, which noted that Boehner’s appearance simply proved that “once again the mighty campaign dollar trumps all.”
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Public Financing, NY Reform
By ReformNY – 03/02/12
Crossposted at ReformNY.
Every Friday, the Brennan Center will be compiling the latest news concerning the corrosive nature of money in New York State politics—and the ongoing need for public financing and robust campaign finance reform. We’ll also be linking to dispatches from around the country highlighting the national scope of this crisis. This week’s links were contributed by Matthew Ladd and Dan Rockoff.
For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtag #moNeYpolitics and #fairelex.
New York Campaign Finance and Ethics News
1. Former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey has joined the push for comprehensive campaign finance reform—including the creation of a statewide public financing program—by joining the NY LEAD coalition, a group of prominent civic and business leaders committed to public campaign financing in Albany. Kerrey explained in a statement, “At the moment there is little hope that Congress will enact a Federal law that provides a voluntary system of public financing. In New York – thanks to the leadership of Governor Cuomo – it could happen. By doing so New York would give power back to small donors in State campaigns and set an example to the U.S. Congress.”
2. John Liu’s campaign treasurer, Jia Hou, has been arrested on charges of fraud and obstruction of justice. Coming a mere two weeks after one of Liu’s most prominent Democratic fundraisers was indicted on similar charges, the arrest casts further doubt on the credibility of Liu’s fundraising practices. It also highlights the crucial role that robust disclosure and enforcement provisions play in New York City’s public campaign finance program, given Hou’s failure to adequately identify donors in her filings to the Campaign Finance Board.
3. The New York Times observes that Gov. Cuomo’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year will make it more difficult for the state Comptroller to audit state contracts before they are signed, arguing that in Albany, “where waste and corruption are too often the default mode,” the value of meaningful pre-audits by the Comptroller’s office should not be taken lightly, regardless of the efficiency gains that the new audit process would achieve.
4. New York will lose two congressional seats as a result of the 2010 census, and Congressional legislators appear to have noticed: those in the greatest danger of losing their seats in the redistricting process have given a combined $169,527 to lobbyists working on the process in the New York state legislature. Representative Nita Lowey, a Democrat, gave $10,000 to the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee’s housekeeping account in November 2011, and Representative Richard Hanna, a Republican, has given $10,000 to the Senate Republican Campaign Committee since last year as well.
National Campaign Finance News
1. The New York Times finds a significant amount of overlap between presidential candidates and their super PACs, suggesting that the theoretical independence of super PACs does not work in practice. The article singles out the relationship between Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and the “Restore our Future” super PAC that supports him, finding, for instance, that both the campaign and the super PAC have both paid a single consulting firm, TargetPoint, for assistance with direct mail. TargetPoint’s founder, Alexander Gage, admitted that the situation looked “ridiculous.”
2. A Democratic state legislator in Kentucky is advocating for a public financing system for judicial candidates running for the state supreme court. State Representative Jim Wayne (D-Louisville) said: “It’s conceivable that special interests could buy Supreme Court justices and put them on the bench. We think that our system is vulnerable to this type of purchase of Supreme Court justices.” The proposal would let judicial candidates obtain voluntary public financing after raising $10,000, including $5,000 in small contributions from at least 200 donors.
3. Former US Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) suggested this week that Supreme Court justices are becoming “squeamish” at the results of their controversial Citizens United ruling, that the ruling has damaged the Court’s credibility, and that he was optimistic the Court might consider reversing itself. Feingold remarked that, given the unprecedented amount of corporate money the decision has unleashed, the Justices “know they’ve done something even worse than Bush v. Gore in terms of the credibility of the court.” In February, Feingold had also attacked President Obama for deciding that his re-election campaign would back a super PAC, arguing that the President was “dancing with the devil.”
4. The billionaire Koch brothers announced this week that they would donate a combined $60 million to super PACs to defeat President Obama’s re-election campaign, in what US Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) calls a “gross perversion of the political process.” Blumenauer notes that in the final three months of 2011, Obama’s re-election campaign and the DNC raised a similar amount from 583,000 separate contributors giving an average of $55 apiece, and that the Koch brothers’ multimillion-dollar threat would “cancel out the efforts of half a million American citizens.”
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, Public Financing, NY Reform
By ReformNY – 02/24/12
Crossposted at ReformNY.
Every Friday, the Brennan Center will be compiling the latest news concerning the corrosive nature of money in New York State politics—and the ongoing need for public financing and robust campaign finance reform. We’ll also be linking to dispatches from around the country highlighting the national scope of this crisis. This week’s links were contributed by Matthew Ladd and Dan Rockoff.
For more stories on an ongoing basis, follow the Twitter hashtag #moNeYpolitics
New York Campaign Finance and Ethics News
1. Proposed regulations by the State Board of Elections for disclosing independent expenditures will create a loophole that allows lobbying groups to continue publishing anonymous attack ads, according to advocates who have reviewed the proposal. The Board’s proposed regulations require disclosure for advertisements containing “express advocacy,” but this requirement can be dodged by avoiding the use of certain key words such as “oppose” or “elect.” Citizens Union points out that the NYC Campaign Finance Board’s proposed regulations call for disclosure of all “electioneering communications,” a requirement that considerably tightens the loophole in NYC. The full text of the proposed state regulations is available here.
2. Twenty-seven members of the City Council sent a letter to Gov. Cuomo this week expressing their strong support for voluntary public campaign financing in New York State, and urging the Governor to propose “comprehensive and effective reform” modeled on New York City’s small-donor matching program.
3. Over half of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee’s spending since last July was made to a consultant with strong ties to convicted felon and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Susan Ralston, the principal of SBR Enterprises, was forced to resign from her position as an aide to Karl Rove in 2006, after the House Government Reform panel issued a report detailing her role as a go-between for Rove and Abramoff.
4. A new report by the money in politics watchdog group Maplight reports that super PACs received more than two-thirds of their total contributions in 2011—roughly $100 million—from only a handful of states, with New Yorkers contributing $13.3 million. The only state with more contributions was Texas.
5. The New York Observer profiles the rise and fall of William Boyland, Jr., the Brooklyn Assemblyman currently under indictment on federal corruption charges—his second such indictment in twelve months. The profile notes that several candidates have emerged to challenge him for his seat, and that polls and petitions calling for Boyland’s resignation have begun circulating in Brownsville.
National Campaign Finance News
1. An editorial in the New York Times highlights the corrosive effect of super PAC influence in federal elections, pointing out that the vast majority of contributions to Republican super PACs are made by a handful of super-wealthy contributors such as Sheldon Adelson, Harold Simmons and Foster Friess, and concluding that “all but the most privileged Americans will pay the price if the nation’s wealthiest can buy elections.” The Times also reported earlier this week on Republican “superdonors,” the wealthy businessmen whose donations form the vast bulk of total contributions to right-leaning super PACs. The report singles out the Texas tycoon Harold Simmons, whose total Republican super PAC contributions total over $14 million, noting that more than $50 million given to Republican super PACs came from just two dozen individuals or corporations.
2. The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, February 17 issued a stay of a decision by the Montana Supreme Court that had upheld the state's restrictions on corporate political spending. The Montana case will allow the Supreme Court to revisit Citizens United much sooner than expected. Justice Ginsburg, writing for herself and Justice Breyer, voted to grant the stay but suggested: “Montana’s experience, and experience elsewhere since this Court’s decision in [Citizens United], make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations ‘do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.’ A petition for certiorari will give the court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway.”
3. Two weeks after stating that President Obama was “dancing with the devil” in accepting super PAC funds for his re-election campaign, former U.S. Senator and lead co-sponsor of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act Russ Feingold has joined the President’s campaign as a co-chair. When asked if his firm commitment to campaign finance reform made his an odd choice for the position, Feingold replied that he was accepting the position for “a president who I believe will help us appoint justices who will overturn Citizens United.”
4. A federal grand jury in Florida is hearing evidence in the FEC investigation of Florida Representative Vern Buchanan, a heavyweight fundraising organizer for GOP candidates nationwide, the New York Times reports. The House Ethics Committee is also examining Rep. Buchanan’s failure to disclose financial dealings in several business interests that could be linked to his fundraising activities.
Tags: Democracy, Campaign Finance Reform, NY Reform
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