Political Parties

Via the Tampa Tribune, yet another reason why Congress should cut off subsidies for presidential candidates and political parties:

They rented an exclusive waterfront mansion, wined and dined at five-star restaurants and hired family members and friends, all on the taxpayers’ dime.

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s 2012 convention team based in the Tampa Bay area raked up nearly $1 million in charges—using a line of credit backed by federal funding—before they were fired by the newly elected party chairman last month.

Read the whole thing here.

Lawyers for the Republican National Committee filed a petition this week seeking review of an appellate court decision on coordination restrictions affecting parties and candidates.

The petition in the case, Cao v. Federal Election Commission, was filed Dec. 8. In September, an en banc panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the plaintiffs, Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao (R-La.), the Republican Party of Louisiana and the RNC. Cao and the RNC are represented by super-campaign finance litigator James Bopp, Jr. of Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom. Bopp is also an RNC vice-chairman.

CCP Chairman Brad Smith discusses the recent conviction of Tom Delay at National Review Online:

When even the Washington Post is coming to the defense of Tom DeLay, one can be sure that something isn’t quite right with the former House majority leader’s prosecution and conviction…

[B]efore McCain-Feingold, both the Republican and the Democratic parties routinely accepted “soft money” (from corporations and unions, plus large individual contributions) from Texas and other states where corporate funds could not be contributed to candidates but where national parties were free to spend soft money on party administration and advertising on issues of importance to the party; they could also send the money to state and local candidates in states that allow corporate contributions. At the same time, national parties also received contributions of “hard money,” consisting of smaller individual contributions. Hard money, kept in separate accounts, was also sent back to state candidates—in all states.

There was thus a constant flow of hard and soft money (the latter including corporate contributions) to and from the national party committees, including direct contributions to state candidates. Indeed, during the 1990s the DNC developed a “tally” system, in part to make sure that soft money contributed to the DNC from a given state was roughly offset by hard-money contributions from the DNC.

In summary, few state party chairs or national party operatives would have given a second thought to the legality of such money swaps in 2002, and it would not be shocking if the case made against DeLay could be made against many others operating in politics at the time. For years, the Democrats tried to “get” Tom DeLay, even filing a RICO action against him in the 1990s. Now they have finally succeeded. Congratulations. But as even the Washington Post is pointing out, ”When Mr. DeLay, following the conviction, assailed ‘the criminalization of politics,’ he had a fair point.”

Read the entire post at National Review Online.

No fireworks exploded at this afternoon’s House Rules Committee hearing on the DISCLOSE Act (H.R. 5175). First Amendment political rights, though, remain at serious risk of going up in smoke as the majority moves forward with an ill-advised bill to ban a significant amount of political speech that was legal even before Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

After two false starts (one before Memorial Day and the second last week), the Committee adopted a rule that provides for an hour of debate on the bill before a vote, likely Thursday morning, according to Capitol Hill sources.

Rules Committee Ranking Member David Dreier asked for four hours of debate, and, especially considering the 45-page Manager’s Amendment adopted in the Rules Committee with no advance notice, his request was eminently reasonable. All GOP motions, however, were rejected. Dreier also moved to make in order an amendment by Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) to eliminate the carve out exempting the National Rifle Association from a disclosure provision of the bill. Democrats also thwarted that effort, endorsing a two-tiered system of First Amendment political rights: one for large, entrenched, Beltway lobbying groups and another for grassroots, local nonprofits.

A panel of three federal judges denied a request by the Republican National Committee to ease the restrictions on unregulated contributions to national political parties. The ruling is here.

This case turned on a procedural issue: the judges viewed themselves as bound by the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission. The Court said that “in due course, the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to clarify or refine this aspect of McConnell as the Court sees fit.”

After several cases loosening political speech regulations for independent groups, both major parties will remain at a competitive disadvantage as long as they remain restricted by archaic and arbitrary contribution limits.

Under the Supreme Court’s rationale since McConnell, national party committees should be able to raise and spend money for non-federal purposes like supporting local candidates, get-out-the-vote infrastructure, redistricting and litigation.

To say that the McConnell ruling applies to party committee activities beyond elections goes too far. These activities do not cause corruption or its appearance, and these efforts are necessary to build grassroots involvement. This spending will occur. The question is whether the government will mandate how it will be spent: through independent groups or, as another option, political parties.

We’re a bit late in finding some time to comment on Unity08, the non-party political party that scored a surprising victory over the Federal Election Commission in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia earlier this month.  It is an important case, because, as the Unity08 organizers had found, under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (“McCain-Feingold”) it had been made de facto illegal to start a new national political party in the U.S.  Unity08 v. FEC thus is the latest in a series of federal court opinions to reassert the primacy of political speech and association under the First Amendment.

The Center for Competitive Politics covered the panel in two posts last week: “Lawyers offer mixed reviews of post-Citizens United leg. at ACS event” and “ACS panel features strong supporters of free political speech.”

The American Constitution Society, the leading liberal legal organization, hosted a remarkable and informative panel on the impact of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Notably, the panel included four defenders of the Court’s majority opinion (in whole or in part) who spoke from a real-word perspective: experience as campaign finance lawyers, FEC staffers and congressional committee aides. The First Amendment Four – Jan Baran of Wiley Rein; Laurence Gold of AFL-CIO and Lichtman, Trister & Ross; James Portnoy of Kraft Foods and Joseph Sandler of Sandler, Reiff & Young – dominated the discussion by explaining why the Supreme Court affirmed long-standing First Amendment jurisprudence in Citizens United and why the decision will not lead citizens like lemmings off a cliff onto a rock-bed of corporate-controlled politics.