In the News
Breitbart: Democrat Commissioner Resignation Creates Opportunity for Change at FEC
By Sean Moran
David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, told Breitbart News, “Commissioner Ravel came from California which has a different setup than the FEC. California’s electoral board is run by the governor, entirely partisan. The FEC was enacted after Watergate, and set up as a bipartisan commission to avoid partisan control over electoral law.”…
Keating explained that with Commissioner Ravel’s resignation there is much opportunity for change at the FEC. He said, “Since all of the remaining FEC Commissioners have expired terms President Trump has an enormous opportunity to reshape campaign finance. Since there cannot be more than three commissioners of any party on the board, President Trump can have the discretion to nominate future Commissioners that are more receptive to free speech.”…
President Trump ran on “draining the swamp,” and David Keating said that Trump could easily “clear the morass of regulations surrounding electoral law.” He added, “One way to drain the swamp would be to make the rules behind political speech clear and straightforward. Clear and simple rules could ensure that freedom of expression on the Internet remains unregulated.”
San Francisco Examiner: Retired judge Kopp appears headed for reappointment to Ethics Commission
By Joshua Sabatini
Retired judge Quentin Kopp appears headed for reappointment to the Ethics Commission for a full six-year term…
Common Cause rallied opposition against Kopp for his opposition to the passage last year of Senate Bill 1107, a Common Cause-supported state law reversing the 1988 voter-approved Prop. 73 ban on public financing. Kopp pushed Prop. 73 at the time and he has since filed a lawsuit over SB 1107.
Charter cities like San Francisco were exempted through litigation from Prop. 73, which is why San Francisco has a public financing program.
Common Cause members said that Kopp’s views on public financing should prevent him from serving on the commission since it is an integral component of The City’s campaign finance system.
Kopp’s supporter Larry Bush, head of Friends of Ethics, defended Kopp’s position on SB 1107, calling it about voter rights and not about Kopp’s position on public financing.
“It is totally unrelated to us in San Francisco,” Bush wrote in an email to the committee. “It is about the authority to create changes in other cities, by the voters or action by political leaders in Sacramento.”
FEC
Bloomberg BNA: FEC’s Direction in Doubt After Ravel’s Departure
By Kenneth P. Doyle
Whether Trump would use new FEC appointments or other means to strengthen campaign finance laws remains in doubt, however. His rhetoric during the campaign often was critical of the influence of big donors, but as president, Trump has given no indication that he supports systemic changes.
In addition, Trump’s appointment of Donald McGahn, a former Republican FEC commissioner, as White House counsel and his nomination of Gorsuch for the Supreme Court are viewed as indicators that he is likely to pursue a deregulatory track on campaign finance issues.
Asked about whether she believed Trump would make FEC appointments to strengthen campaign finance regulation, Ravel said she was “always an optimist” but admitted she was skeptical that would happen. She noted in particular Trump’s appointment of McGahn, who frequently voted against stronger regulations and enforcement action, and battled with Democrats and career agency staff while at the FEC.
Republican National Lawyers Association: Left Reveals View of FEC as Tool to Oppose Republicans
By Lisa Dixon
Over the long weekend, Democrat FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel resigned from the FEC. We’ve catalogued Commissioner Ravel’s partisanship, passion for regulating internet speech, questioning of citizens’ loyalty based on their employer, charges of dysfunction aimed at Republican commissioners following the law, inconsistent application of the law, and many other questionable statements and actions during her tenure at the FEC.
Of course, in her letter of resignation to President Trump and a 24-page exit report on “Dysfunction and Deadlock,” she repeated the same trite campaign finance “reform” rhetoric perpetuated by the left despite being disproved by recent history…
Even with the exit of Commissioner Ravel, no Republican or conservative speaker, especially those who must wade through the bureaucratic nightmare of an FEC complaint, can trust the FEC to act impartially while Democratic commissioners and “reform”-minded FEC staff sponsor explicitly anti-Republican messages and use campaign finance regulation as a tool to disadvantage Republicans.
Supreme Court
New Yorker: Six Questions Senators Should Ask Neil Gorsuch
By Jeffrey Toobin
Is money speech? Can Congress or the states regulate campaign expenditures at all? Congress has banned corporations from contributing directly to political campaigns for a century. Is that ban constitutional?
These scenarios emerge from the Court’s notorious Citizens United decision, in 2010, which led to the removal of limits on independent expenditures in support of candidates, and from more recent cases interpreting that decision, such as McCutcheon v. F.E.C. The logical extension of these cases is that any and all regulation of campaign spending-involving money from individuals, super pacs, or even corporations-is prohibited by the First Amendment. Gorsuch should address the modern concept, championed by many conservatives, that the First Amendment requires the all but total deregulation of political campaigns.
Congress
KRVS Louisiana Public Radio: In ‘Captured,’ Democratic Senator Decries Money’s Role In Politics
By Ari Shapiro
Shapiro: You argue that American government is effectively held hostage and steered by corporate interests. And I wonder if you could begin by giving us a personal example from your career as a senator when you felt pressure from a specific corporation to do something that you felt was not in your constituents’ interests.
Whitehouse: It hasn’t happened in that exact way. The observation that I would make is that before Citizens United, when I first got to the Senate, we had probably a solid handful Republican-sponsored climate change bills floating around. And…
Shapiro: Easy for you to put this on Republicans, but I’m wondering if you personally have felt pressure, even as a Democrat representing a liberal state like Rhode Island?
Whitehouse: I can’t think of a particular instance…
Shapiro: And you feel as though if you don’t take those meetings [with lobbyists], suddenly millions of dollars will be spent against you in your next campaign? Is there an implicit threat or what?
Whitehouse: No, not really. I think it’s a more steady pressure.
Donors
Washington Times: Trump smashes Obama’s small-donor fundraising pace, bests Clinton, Sanders combined
By David Sherfinski
Mr. Trump raised about $239 million from small donors during the campaign, compared with Mr. Obama’s $219 million in 2012 – then a record – and about $181 million in 2008, according to the report from the Campaign Finance Institute.
Mr. Trump’s total was also more than the small-dollar donations – defined as $200 or less – given to 2016 Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton ($137 million) and Sen. Bernard Sanders ($100 million) combined…
The figures represent donors who gave over the course of a two-year cycle, so many Clinton, Sanders and Obama donors could have started small and eventually triggered the $201 threshold, according to the CFI analysis.
“Because Trump raised most of his money over four months, fewer of his donors had this experience,” the analysis said. “Even this caveat, however, does not negate the fact that his small-donor numbers were record-shattering.”
Political Parties
CRP: Chairing the DNC: A multimillion-dollar election
By Niv Sultan
There’s a packed field in the race to chair the Democratic National Committee, whose 447 members will elect their new leader on Saturday. Rep. Keith Ellison and former Secretary of Labor Tom Perez lead the nine candidates who remain in the contest…
On his campaign website, Ellison touts his status as a “proven fundraiser,” and he has backed up that claim in pursuit of his goal. An Ellison spokesperson told OpenSecrets Blog that the campaign was raising money through three accounts: Ellison for Congress, Ellison’s federal campaign committee; Everybody Counts Everybody Matters PAC, Ellison’s federal leadership PAC; and Keith for DNC, a joint fundraising mechanism….
Ellison’s most prominent competitor, Tom Perez, was secretary of labor under former President Barack Obama from 2013-2017. His campaign raises funds through Team Tom, a 527 organization. In fact, six of the nine current candidates use 527 groups for their campaigns; they don’t have campaign committees because they have never run for federal office.
Candidates and Campaigns
Roll Call: Georgia Democrat Picks Up Progressive Endorsement
By Simone Pathé
End Citizens United, a liberal political action committee, is throwing its weight behind Democrat Jon Ossoff in the race to replace Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price in Georgia’s 6th District…
“We need an anti-corruption reformer like Jon Ossoff in Congress to lead the fight against President Trump and his allies, who are doubling down on a rigged system,” Tiffany Muller, executive director of End Citizens United, said in statement.
The group’s goal is to overturn the controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision that deregulated corporate and union spending for or against specific candidates. It endorses Democratic candidates committed to a campaign finance overhaul, and spent $15 million on House and Senate races in 2016.
The PAC will connect Ossoff’s campaign with local volunteers – it has 40,000 members in the Atlanta area – and activate its national donors, ensuring “he has the resources to win,” according to a statement from the organization.
The States
Pierre Capital Journal: On a big day legislators grind ahead with ethics and campaign restrictions
By Bob Mercer
The Legislature’s Republicans repealed IM 22 earlier this month. It would have set tight restrictions on legislators, other public officials, their families and lobbyists. Legislators are now working on a variety of concepts, in some instances similar to parts of IM 22, to put into law.
The Senate committee also unanimously endorsed legislation from Rep. Larry Rhoden, R-Union Center, to allow the secretary of state to levy fines for campaign violations. It also would set investigation processes for employees of the legislative and judicial branches and for other elected officials.
“This puts more teeth in it,” Hawley said about Rhoden’s HB 1089.
Those two bills, both heavily amended, will be up for debate by the full House on Thursday afternoon. So will another bill from Mickelson requiring big donors to ballot measure campaigns to reveal their 50 largest contributors.
The Senate will consider on Thursday afternoon a complicated rewrite of many campaign finance laws. The original proposals came from Secretary of State Shantel Krebs before going through further amendments by the Senate State Affairs Committee.
Palmetto Business Daily: Critics say Leatherman bill is attack on free speech
Opponents of a bill filed in the South Carolina Senate that would place more stringent reporting requirements on independent expenditure committees believe it is an attack on free speech.
Senate Bill 255 introduces definitions for independent expenditure committees, but also lists a series of reporting requirements those groups will need to provide, including the name, address and employer of those contributing an aggregate of $1,000 or more in any reporting period…
The Senate received a strongly worded letter opposing the bill from the National Right to Work Committee of South Carolina, which argued that it could stifle free speech and leave donors to nonprofit, grass roots organizations open to harassment. The committee argues it is unconstitutional.
Independent expenditure committees are citizen action groups that engage in issue-based advocacy but not organized or operating in support of or in opposition to particular candidates.
Barton Swaim, communications director for the South Carolina Policy Council, said the impetus for the bill is clear — lawmakers do not like being criticized.