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Political Committees & 527s
CCP Recommended Results
Free Speech and the 527 Prohibition
Stephen M. Hoersting’s briefing paper for Cato Institute questions the constitutionality and wisdom of regulating independent Section 527 organizations. He believes that measures to make independent section 527 organizations into "political committees" under the Federal Election Campaign Act, would leave much activity unregulated and would induce a shift of activity from one legal structure to another, thus rendering any perceived partisan advantage arising from the measures improbable or incalculable. Therefore, says Hoersting, organizations engaged in independent speech and association with no connection to candidates or officeholders cannot be made to register with the Federal Election Commission simply because they mention candidates.
This Is Reform? Predicting the Impact of the New Campaign Financing Regulations
Patrick Basham
November 2002
Category: Contributions & Limits, Political Committees & 527s
Cato Briefing Paper No. 78
McCain-style campaign finance regulation is the new campaign reality. But what exactly will this reformist utopia look like? Assessing the "reformed" campaign of the future against the stated desires and expectations of the principal campaign finance regulators and their media supporters, this paper predicts the most important changes in political campaigning, changes that will be experienced for the first time during the 2003–04 electoral cycle.
Are PAC Contributions and Lobbying Linked? New Evidence from the 1995 Lobby Disclosure Act
Micky Tripathi, Stephen Ansolabehere and James M. Snyder
July 2002
Category: Lobbying, Political Committees & 527s
Business and Politics, 2002, vol. 4, issue 2
This paper uses data from the 1995 Lobby Disclosure Act to assess the argument that PAC contributions are used to gain access to legislators.
Why Do Political Action Committees Give Money to Candidates? Campaign Contributions, Policy Choices, and Election Outcomes
Christopher Magee
October 2000
Category: Contributions & Limits, Political Committees & 527s
This article addresses the reasons that political action committees (PAC) give contributions to campaigns, and if the PAC's motive is to influence the votes of legislators through their contributions. The author provides a model of PAC behavior, and equations that are described throughout the article. Through the models and equations, the author concludes that PACs give money to candidates to affect the probability of the candidate being elected.
Corporate PAC Campaign Contributions in Perspective
Jeffrey Milyo, David Primo, and Timothy Groseclose
April 2000
Category: Contributions & Limits, Political Committees & 527s
Business and Politics, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2000
There is a vast empirical literature on the allocation of corporate PAC contributions in Congressional elections and the influence that these contributions have on the policy-making process. The attention given to PAC contributions is far in excess of their actual importance. Corporate PAC contributions account for about 10% of Congressional campaign spending and major corporations allocate far more money to lobbying or philanthropy than their affiliated PACs make in contributions.
PACs and Parties
Larry J. Sabato
January 2000
Category: Coordination, Political Committees & 527s, Political Parties
Political money: deregulating American politics, selected writings on campaign finance reform/edited by Annelise Anderson. Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 459
This chapter first appeared in Money, Elections, and Democracy: Reforming Congressional Campaign Finance, edited by Margaret Lotus Nugent and John R. Johannes (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 187–204. In "PACs and Parties," Sabato, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia and the author of several books on the American political process, considers the relationship between political action committees and political parties, especially since the passage of the campaign finance legislation of the 1970s.
