I guess it’s “unforeseen” if you’re oblivious to the obvious…

by Sean Parnell

File Under: "Clean" Elections, Faulty Assumptions, Taxpayer Financing

We've been following closely the Goldwater Institute's case in Arizona challenging their taxpayer-funded campaign scheme. Readers may recall that, based on the Supreme Court's ruling in Davis v. F.E.C., U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver ruled that the "matching funds" provision of Arizona's so-called "clean elections" program was unconstitutional. After a great deal of educational efforts by CCP, it was this ruling that led to the final collapse of efforts in New Jersey to extend and expand their own welfare-for-politicians experiment in early September.

Although Judge Silver acknowledged that the "matching fund" were unconstitutional, she held off on preventing the program from moving forward with dispensing the additional money to candidates participating in the program. Instead, she asked attorneys for both sides to prepare arguments over whether the First Amendment rights damaged by the program were sufficient to change the rules this close to the election (presumably the matching funds are history either way after this election).

Reading this article reporting on yesterday's hearing, I had to chuckle over the assertions of the attorney defending the "clean elections" program and why the "matching funds" should be distributed despite the fact that they are unconstitutional:

Brad Phillips, a California-based attorney representing the Clean Elections Institute, said revoking publicly funded candidates' ability to collect matching funds would unfairly punish them for using the system and hold them accountable for unseen risks that the provision could be swept away in the middle of a campaign.

"In good faith, they relied on the act as well as the matching funds," said Phillips, adding that the candidates would be ill-prepared to respond to last-minute advertisements from their opponents.

Click on the headline above to see just how "unforseen" the risks were.

Published on October 10, 2008

An interesting question and what I hope is an interesting response

by Sean Parnell

File Under: Faulty Assumptions

Earlier this week CCP received a request from a student at Trinity University who is writing a research paper on campaign finance regulation. I thought I'd share with you one of her questions, and my response.

Q: What sort of campaign finance reforms would take into account individual rights to freedom of political expression while also protecting the general public from possible corruption?

A:There is no real "protection" from possible corruption available through campaign finance "reform," because there is very little corruption that goes through the campaign finance system. The $90,000 found in William Jefferson's refrigerator and the "menu" of bribes that Randy "Duke" Cunningham created, just to mention two more recent and notorious examples of public corruption, had nothing to do with campaign contributions, and in fact suggest that campaign contributions aren't sufficient to get Members of Congress to engage in unethical behavior (otherwise, they wouldn't have had to have been bribed). The alternative would be to suggest that Jefferson and Cunningham are/were among the least corrupt Members of Congress, because their colleagues are corrupted by far less amounts of money that can only be used for a limited purpose, their campaigns. Few would agree with this latter explanation, I suspect.

The best reforms would acknowledge that money is vital to political speech (just as it is vital to the press and houses of worship, as we'd quickly see if we made it illegal to spend more than $2,300 in advertising with a single newspaper or to contribute more than $2,300 to a church), and recognize that campaign contributions don't pose the threat of corruption that is popularly thought. Unlimited contributions, with disclosure for truly large donations to elected officials, would be the best way to go, along with a voting public that is vigilant and pays attention to what their elected officials are doing and how they are spending taxpayer dollars. Absent a public unwilling to put up with corruption, there is no reform, either along the "McCain-Feingold" lines or what we at CCP would prefer, that is going to address corruption in government.

Published on October 9, 2008

Federalist Society Election Law Conference

CCP chairman Bradley A. Smith will be participating on a panel titled "Election Finance and 527s" today at 10:30 a.m. as part of the Federalist Society's Election Law Conference.

Smith will be joined by Mr. Joseph M. Birkenstock of Caplin Drysdale, Mr. James Bopp of Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom, and Mr. Scott E. Thomas of Dickstein Shapiro.

According to the Federalist Society, "This panel will consider the laws and regulations that limit or restrict giving, receiving, and/or spending related to an election, as well as the constitutional requirements and boundaries for such rules.  Thus, the panel will consider the topics that generally fall under the umbrella of campaign finance, most notably the continued fight over who can contribute and/or expend what money on political advertising."

More after the jump.

Published on October 7, 2008

WWJD: What Would Jefferson Do?

by David Mason

File Under: Enforcement

Barack Obama is upset about lies he thinks are being told about him.  CCP and others are alarmed by threats to resort to criminal and regulatory processes to silence his critics.

In trying situations we sometimes ask what great leaders would do.  In the case of Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic Party, we don't have to guess.

Jefferson was subject to outrageous attacks on his patriotism (too French), his religious beliefs (allegedly atheist), and his personal life.  His political allies were actually thrown in jail for criticizing the ruling Federalists.  Armed conflict seemed a real possibility.

Jefferson fought back hard, but he used the press and the political process, not threats of prosecution.  Rather than turning the tables once he gained power, he used the experience to show America, and the world, the superiority of free speech over government coercion to combat error.  It's a lesson the Obama campaign should learn.

Published on October 3, 2008

Defending Nancy Pelosi

by David Mason

File Under: Faulty Assumptions, Press

The Center for Competitive Politics welcomes former FEC Commissioner David Mason as an occasional contributor to the blog. His first post follows:

Put me down as opposed to most of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's political aims, but she deserves some defense from a front page ethics attack in today's Washington Times. 

The Times reports dramatically that "Pelosi's PAC pays bills for spouse's firm", referring to $99,000 in payments over the past 9 years.  The problem is, there is no evidence, at least in the Times story or FEC reports, that the PAC is paying bills for Paul Pelosi's apparently successful firm, FLS, much less that Paul Pelosi is "on the payroll" of the PAC as suggested in the story.

What FEC reports do show is a classic Catch-22 that Federal campaign finance law creates: Pelosi's PAC cannot accept free rent from her husband's business, but if she pays rent, as required by law, she's accused of lining her family's pockets.  The kerfuffle has nothing really to do with ethics, and no bearing on any important issue, but it gets front page treatment because the mere hint of corruption is politically powerful.

More after the jump.

Published on October 1, 2008 03:00 PM

Will Frankenstein Return?

by Michael Schrimpf

A long slumbering, but never dead, enemy of free speech is now able to return.

The Orwellian-titled Fairness Doctrine forced broadcasters to "afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance" until the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) abolished it in the 1980's.

Initially intended to force broadcast stations to "cover controversial issues of public importance to the community" and "provide a reasonable opportunity for the presentation of contrasting viewpoints on those issues," the Fairness Doctrine did just the opposite.

An amendment to an appropriations bill banned the FCC from re-instating the Fairness Doctrine during the last fiscal year.  But today marks the beginning of a new fiscal year and some legislative leaders have already begun touting the merits of the Fairness Doctrine.

More after the jump.

Published on October 1, 2008

Do Taxpayer-Funded Campaigns Save Taxpayer Dollars?

The Center for Competitive Politics (CCP) released today an issue analysis refuting the myth that the cost of taxpayer-financed political campaigns can be offset by removing alleged pressures placed on officeholders by so-called ‘special interest' contributors.

"The claim that taxpayer-financed campaigns may actually lead to savings for taxpayers is demonstrably false," said Sean Parnell, President of the Center for Competitive Politics.  "These political welfare schemes continue to show themselves to be a poor use of taxpayer dollars with few discernable positive outcomes."

Advocates of taxpayer-financed campaigns like the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG) have claimed in the past that public-financing programs would "accrue enormous savings by reducing wasteful expenditures, such as earmarks."  Common Cause, another advocate of taxpayer-financed campaigns, has stated that such programs save "taxpayer dollars by reducing inappropriate giveaways to campaign contributors."

But CCP's review of the state budgets in Arizona and Maine, the two states commonly cited by proponents as having model public-financing systems, refutes these claims.

More after the jump.

Published on September 30, 2008