The Big Question: Will corporate money change campaigns?

Some of the nation’s top political
commentators, legislators and intellectuals offer insight into the biggest
question burning up the blogosphere today.

Today’s question:

The U.S. Supreme Court strikes
down campaign finance restrictions. What is your reaction to this decision?

Rob Richie, president of FairVote, said:

“It’s been 39 years since Congress sent a new constitutional amendment to the states that then earned approval, following a decade in which the Constitution was amended four times. Every half-century — the 1860s, the 1910s and the 1960s — the American people realize that they own this republic and take action to protect it and generally expand democracy through constitutional change.

“This ruling will trigger a new debate about how best to balance democracy, equality and liberty that must go beyond nine justices on the Supreme Court. I foresee will trigger serious talk of constitutional change – one example being Move to Amend. Stay tuned.”

Thomas E. Mann, senior fellow of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institue, said:

I’m not surprised by the decision.  Ever since John Roberts joined the Court and Sam Alito replaced Sandra Day O’Connor, a 5-4 conservative majority has signaled its disdain for campaign finance regulation and its desire to deregulate policy by overturning laws passed by Congress and reversing judicial precedents.  They reached for a case, which was originally filed and argued on narrow grounds, to allow themselves to do just that.  It makes a mockery of Chief Justice Roberts’ pious statements during his confirmation hearing before Congress about his embrace of judicial modesty and constitutional avoidance.  His concurring decision fashioned to answer this expected criticism strikes this reader as defensive and lame.  This decision constitutes a dramatic change in law yet nothing has changed to produce it other than the composition of the Court.  Sadly, deliberation on the Court is becoming as ideologically driven as that in Congress.

How will critics react?  A timely, constitutional, and effective legislative response will be very hard to achieve.  Over the longer run, the best option is to use policy to encourage the proliferation of small donors to balance the resources of corporations.  In the short term, politicians are likely to try to link the decision to populist outrage at large financial institutions.  Perhaps more constructively, I expect citizen groups to use the disclosure provision that was retained to embarrass corporations that rush to take advantage of this reversal in the law and large institutional and individual investors offended by the prospect of corporate treasuries being raided for political campaigns at the direction of its top management to work to ensure those decisions are made by trustees and shareholders.

 

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), said:

Today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling is the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case.  It leads us all down the road to serfdom.  It allows corporations to spend an unlimited amount of money to influence and manipulate federal elections.  It overturns more than a century of law and precedent.

The court decision completely ignores the likelihood that corporations will spend money to elect officials who will do their bidding, and punish those who won’t.  It allows unlimited election spending by all corporations, even foreign ones.  The Supreme Court has decided to protect the rights of GE, Volkswagen, Lukoil and Aramco, at the expense of our right to good government.

I introduced five bills, the Save Our Democracy package, in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s ruling.  We need to act on them immediately.  If we do nothing, then before long, there won’t be Senators from Oklahoma or Virginia, there will be Senators from Citibank and Walmart.  Maybe they will wear insignias on their $500 suits, like NASCAR drivers do.  If this ruling goes unchallenged, then you can kiss your country goodbye.
 

 

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said:

I am
disappointed by the decision of the Supreme Court and the lifting of the limits
on corporate and union contributions. However, it appears that key aspects of
the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), including the ban on soft money
contributions, remain intact.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said:

The First Amendment has been vindicated by the High Court.  Judicial Watch believes that better enforcement of bribery and extortion laws are key to fighting government corruption – not self-serving restrictions on free speech by politicians. Allowing full participation in our nation’s political process for citizens acting through corporations will do more to hold corrupt politicians accountable than any campaign finance restriction or bureaucratic regulation.

Judicial Watch filed an amicus curiae brief in support of free speech in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.  Judicial Watch argued in its brief that:

.    Political speech is at the heart of the First Amendment and is entitled to the broadest protection.

.    Unlike contributions to candidates, independent expenditures, which are not coordinated with a candidate or campaign, do not pose a danger of corruption or its appearance.

.    The Supreme Court has consistently invalidated legislative attempts at limiting or restricting corporate expenditures as violative of First Amendment free speech.

 

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU
School of Law, said:

This is a
dark day for our democracy.  In Citizens United, the Supreme Court has
granted corporations the same speech rights as American citizens.  This
holds the potential to drown out small donors with big corporate cash.  A
huge problem Citizens United raises is that when publicly-traded corporations
“speak” by purchasing advertisements that few individuals could afford, they do
so with other people’s money—that of shareholders.  In the coming days
Congress will need to make thoughtful changes to the law to empower voters and
citizens.  Such changes could be providing public financing for
Congressional elections, changing the securities laws to empower shareholders
to vote on corporate political expenditures and even a Constitutional amendment
to undo the harm the Supreme Court has caused today.

Bruce E. Gronbeck, professor of Political
Communication at the University of Iowa, said:

Once
again, we run into one of the ugliest First Amendment rights questions that
this country faces:  we equate money with speech.  The coming of
electronic media, especially, made speaking to a truly national audience
possible, and, given our commercial media systems, that took cash.  And, since
the dawning of radio politics (1924), campaign films (1924), television ads
(1952), and serious use of computer data (1960) and computer-based
communications (1992), the cost of presidential campaigning has soared election
and election.  Until the Supreme Court is willing to decouple money and
speech, until Congress is willing to legislate free air time for electioneering
(to go among with free digital communication), and until states go along with
similar reforms, citizens will be stuck with the most expensive electoral
system in the world.  Obscenely expensive “talk.”

 

Dick Morris, Pundits blog contributor, said:

The harm of
allowing big corporate and union money in elections is dwarfed by the
impediments to free speech that the McCain-Feingold law represented. This is a
key blow for freedom and for democracy.

 

Karen Scharff, executive director of Citizen Action
of New York, said:

Today’s
Supreme Court decision has opened the floodgates to corporate control of our
democracy. Already, wealthy donors and large corporate interests shape public
policy against the public interest — their campaign contributions drove the
financial deregulation that destroyed our economy, and they killed serious cost
controls in healthcare reform. Now that we have reached a point in politics
where the best funded candidates win, the abandonment by the Court of all
regulation gives the wealthiest corporate interests the ability to determine
who will be elected to Congress in 2010.

Meredith McGehee, executive director of the Campaign
Legal Center, said:

Today’s
decision from the Supreme Court is an extreme example of judicial overreach
that arbitrarily overturns decades of precedent and undercuts the powers of the
legislative branch.  What the Supreme Court majority did today was empower
corporations to use their enormous wealth and urge the election or defeat of
federal candidates, and in doing so, buy even more power over the legislative
process and government decision-making.  As a result of this decision, for
profit corporations and industries will be able to threaten members of Congress
with negative ads if they vote against corporate interests, and to spend tens
of millions on campaign ads to “punish” those who do not knuckle
under to their lobbying threats.

More than a century’s worth of federal and state policy restricting corporate
campaign activity in federal elections has been undermined by the Court today,
to say nothing of the longstanding precedent upholding those laws against
myriad challenges.  Most irresponsibly, the narrow Court majority chose to
take this radical step without even the benefit of a record from the lower
courts, and in a case where there were several opportunities to decide the
issues without over-turning Acts of Congress. This case has all the hallmarks
of the very judicial activism that conservatives usually criticize. Lacking an
even vaguely authoritative set of facts in the case, the Court chose to act not
upon relevant facts in a fully developed record, but rather based on its gut
instinct in a gesture of disturbing condescension toward Congress and the
American people.  In this case five Justices have decided to assume the
role of legislators, and to actively reach out to decide matters better left to
the expertise of Congress.

 

Nick Nyart, president and CEO of Public
Campaign, said:

Recent debates over health care and financial industry reform have demonstrated
the power that special interests currently wield in Washington, D.C. And today,
by a narrow majority, the Roberts’ Court has given these deep pocketed
interests even more say in the political process.

In its decision, the Court has erased the distinction between corporate and
individual expenditures in federal elections, opening the door for unlimited
corporate influence.

This decision will force candidates for Congress to spend even more time
dialing for dollars and attending gala fundraisers instead of focusing on the
challenges facing them. It will increase members of Congress’s fear of
political reprisal for votes cast or policy decisions made that may be in the
best interests of their constituents but are opposed by deep-pocketed special
interests. Congressional schedules will be pitted against the calendar of
campaign fundraisers.

If you like Congressional gridlock and insider politics, then you’ll love this
decision. If you think the lobbyists for the banks, insurance firms, and oil
companies need more power, you’ll love this decision. But if you value
fairness, democracy and the free speech of ordinary citizens, this is a
disaster. It is an immoral decision that puts the Roberts’ Court on the side of
Wall Street and the big money lobbyists against the interests of Main Street
America.

Congress needs to address this decision swiftly and forcefully to empower
everyday Americans and end the undue influence of big money on our elected
officials. With this decision, the need to change the system has never been
greater, and the stakes have never been higher.

 

Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, said:

This is a
victory for free speech: setting limits on campaign contributions is an
intolerable infringement on free speech, and could be used to stifle opponents
of government policies, or “third” parties that threaten the two-party
monopoly.

Campaign finance laws are a perfect example of the phenomenon of
“regulatory capture,” in which the entities that are supposed to be
reined succeed in co-opting the very agencies set up to regulate them.
Remember: Congress is composed, not of some objective body of disinterested
solons and scholars, but career politicians who want to ensure their own power
in perpetuity. To have them, of all people, ensuring the sanctity of free and
open elections is like entrusting a bear to guard the honey pot. Gerrymandering
has ensured that the House of Representatives is filled with political hacks
and the servants of lobbyists: campaign finance “reform” ensures that
these aristocrats, and their compadres in the Senate, are protected from
insurgents forever.

William E. Lee, professor of journalism at the University of Georgia, said: 

When informed of the Supreme Court’s 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, Alexander Meiklejohn exclaimed, “it is an occasion for dancing in the streets.” Today’s Citizens United decision is also an occasion for dancing in the streets. The Roberts Court finally issued a bold First Amendment ruling. Unlike the tepid approach taken in Wisconsin Right to Life, criticized by Justice Scalia as “faux judicial restraint,” the Court today did not hold back. At every turn where the Court could have issued a narrow and qualified ruling, it instead spoke boldly about the primacy of political speech and the absurdity of the complex system of regulation created by Congress and the FEC. The only downside to this ruling is that I now have to completely rewrite the political speech chapter in my book The Law of Public Communication. It will be a pleasure, however, to gut the material about corporations, qualified non-profit corporations, PACs and similar mind-numbing material. In its place will be a powerful exposition of the the right to speak, regardless of the identity of the speaker.

Alan Abramowitz, professor of Political Science at
Emory University, said:

Although not
unexpected, this obviously represents a huge change in campaign finance
regulation with potentially major consequences for the electoral process. 
If this isn’t judicial activism, I don’t know what is. 

 

Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of Service Employees International Union, said:

“Today the
US Supreme Court lifted the floodgates and started dismantling century-old
restrictions on corporate electoral activity in the name of the ‘free speech
rights’ of corporations—meaning if you are a ‘corporate person’ (aka a CEO or
corporate official), you are now free to hit the corporate ATM and spend
whatever of your shareholders’ money it takes to elect the candidates of your
choice.

“Unlimited corporate spending in federal elections threatens to drown out the
voices of the people who should really be at the center of the political
process, i.e., voters and candidates.  Unleashing corporate spending will
only serve to distort and ultimately delegitimize the electoral process.

“Let’s be clear: corporations have already been shilling out a lot of cash for
political activities, letting their shareholders and managerial employees know
exactly which candidates they want to win or lose elections and paying heavy
sums for attack ads, direct mail and other forms of public communication
through PACs.

“But with today’s Citizens United decision, the Court has given corporate
managers the greenlight to bypass the checks and balances, use unlimited
amounts from the general treasury –funds that should be used to increase the
value of the business or pay dividends to shareholders—to instead pay for
public communications expressly advocating the election or defeat of the
candidates of their choice.

“Our democratic process was meant to protect the people not profit margins and
today’s decision makes the need for an effective system for public funding,
effective disclosure regulations, and other reforms of federal elections all
the more pressing.

“We look forward to working with concerned individuals, officials and groups to
remedy to the greatest degree possible the unfortunate consequences of this
Supreme Court decision, through legislation and other appropriate means.”

 

Frank Askin, professor of law at Rutgers
University, said:

A not
unexpected constitutional disaster. Appears to open the floodgate to corporate
involvement in electoral politics. But still have to read the decision to see
just how sweeping it is.  Does it allow direct corporate contributions to
political candidates, wiping out a hundred years of constitutional
jurisprudence going back to the Tillman Act in 1907? Does it permit Congress to
enact narrower restrictions on political spending by some types of business
corporations?

 

Bill Press, host of the “Bill Press
Show” and a contributor to the Pundits Blog, said:

This is a
huge step backward for representative democracy. It puts the lobbyists and big
corporations back in charge of Washington and will make it harder for
everybody, liberal or conservative, to get good legislation passed. We might as
well erect a big sign over the Capitol building: “Money Rules.”

John Feehery, Pundits Blog contributor, said:

Good
riddance. The law was a perfect example of the old adage that the path to hell
is paved with good intentions. Free speech might be uncomfortable for
politicians, but that is the way this country was supposed to operate.

 

Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow in Constitutional
Studies at the Cato Institute and editor in chief of the Cato Supreme Court
Review, said:

As Justice
Kennedy said in announcing the opinion, “if the First Amendment has any force,
it prohibits jailing citizens for engaging in political speech.”

While the Court has long upheld campaign finance regulations as a way to
prevent corruption in elections, it has also repeated that equalizing speech is
never a valid government interest. After all, to make campaign spending equal,
the government would have to prevent some people or groups from spending less
than they wished. That is directly contrary to protecting speech from
government restraint, which is ultimately the heart of American conceptions
about the freedom of speech.

Today’s ruling may well lead to more corporate and union election spending, but
none of this money will go directly to candidates — so there is no possible
corruption or even “appearance of corruption.” It will go instead to spreading
information about candidates and issues. Such increases in spending should be
welcome because studies have shown that more spending — more political
communication — leads to better-informed voters. In short, the Citizens United
decision has strengthened both the First Amendment and American democracy.

Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said:

Shed a tear
for our democracy.

Today, in the case Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled
that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of
money to influence election outcomes.

Money from Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and the rest of the Fortune 500 is
already corroding the policy making process in Washington, state capitals and
city halls. Today, the Supreme Court tells these corporate giants that they
have a constitutional right to trample our democracy.

In eviscerating longstanding rules prohibiting corporations from using their
own monies to influence elections, the court invites giant corporations to open
up their treasuries to buy election outcomes. Corporations are sure to accept
the invitation.

The predictable result will be corporate money flooding the election process;
huge targeted campaigns by corporations and their front groups attacking
principled candidates who challenge parochial corporate interests; and a
chilling effect on candidates and election officials, who will be deterred from
advocating and implementing policies that advance the public interest but
injure deep-pocket corporations.

Because today’s decision is made on First Amendment constitutional grounds, the
impact will be felt not only at the federal level, but in the states and
localities, including in state judicial elections.

In one sense, today’s decision was a long time in coming. Over the past 30
years, the Supreme Court has created and steadily expanded the First Amendment
protections that it has afforded for-profit corporations.

But in another sense, the decision is a startling break from Supreme Court tradition.
Even as it has mistakenly equated money with speech in the political context,
the court has long upheld regulations on corporate spending in the electoral
context. The Citizens United decision is also an astonishing overreach by the
court. No one thought the issue of corporations’ purported right to spend money
to influence election outcomes was at stake in this case until the Supreme
Court so decreed. The case had been argued in lower courts, and was originally
argued before the Supreme Court, on narrow grounds related to application of
the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

The court has invented the idea that corporations have First Amendment rights
to influence election outcomes out of whole cloth. There is surely no
originalist interpretation to support this outcome, since the court created the
rights only in recent decades. Nor can the outcome be justified in light of the
underlying purpose and spirit of the First Amendment. Corporations are
state-created entities, not real people. They do not have expressive interests
like humans; and, unlike humans, they are uniquely motivated by a singular
focus on their economic bottom line. Corporate spending on elections defeats
rather than advances the democratic thrust of the First Amendment.

We, the People cannot allow this decision to go unchallenged. We, the People
cannot allow corporations to take control of our democracy.

Public Citizen is going to do everything we can to mitigate the damage from
today’s decision, and to overturn this misguided ruling.

First, we must have public financing of elections. Public financing will give
independent candidates a base from which they may be able to compete against
candidates benefiting from corporate expenditures. We will intensify our
efforts to win rapid passage of the Fair Elections Now Act, which would provide
congressional candidates with an alternative to corporate-funded campaigns
before fundraising for the 2010 election is in full swing. Sponsored by Sen.
Richard Durbin (D.-Ill.) and Rep. John Larson (D.-Conn.), the bill would
encourage unlimited small-dollar donations from individuals and provide
candidates with public funding in exchange for refusing corporate contributions
or private contributions in amounts of more than $100. The proposal has broad
support, including more than 110 co-sponsors in the House.

In the wake of the court’s decision, it is also essential that the presidential
public financing system be made viable again. Cities and states will also need
to enact public financing of elections.

Second, we will urge Congress to ensure that corporate CEOs do not use
corporate funds for political purposes, against the wishes of shareholders. We
will support legislation requiring an absolute majority of shares to be voted
in favor, before any corporate political expenditure is permitted.

These mitigating measures will not be enough to offset today’s decision,
however. The decision itself must be overturned.

Public Citizen will aggressively work in support of a constitutional amendment
specifying that for-profit corporations are not entitled to First Amendment
protections, except for freedom of the press. We do not lightly call for a
constitutional amendment. But today’s decision so imperils our democratic
well-being, and so severely distorts the rightful purpose of the First
Amendment, that a constitutional corrective is demanded.

We are formulating language for possible amendments, asking members of the
public to sign a petition to affirm their support for the idea of
constitutional change, and planning to convene leading thinkers in the areas of
constitutional law and corporate accountability to begin a series of in-depth
conversations about winning a constitutional amendment.

The Supreme Court has lost its way today. Democracy is rule of the people –
real, live humans, not artificial entity corporations. Now it’s time for the
people to reassert their rights. 

 

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Today’s earlier question:

Will Democrats push ahead with
healthcare reform legislation? If so, how?

Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics
at the University of Virginia, said:

If Democrats
insist on pushing through the current health care package, they will validate
GOP claims of “arrogance” and miss the important message from Massachusetts and
a host of recent national opinion polls. Massachusetts was not an isolated
case. Check out today’s Crystal Ball at http://bit.ly/SenateRatings. 
In the wake of Scott Brown’s victory, as well as fresh surveys and insider
soundings around the country, the U.Va. Center for Politics estimates that, if
the election were held today, Republicans would gain an additional 7 Senate
seats, bringing the Democrats from their current 59 down to 52.

The good news for Democrats is that the election isn’t today, and there’s time
(barely) for some substantial mid-course corrections before November 2nd.

The good news for Republicans is that they can potentially expand the playing
field further by securing strong challengers in states like Indiana,
Washington, and Wisconsin.

 

Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, said:

This
question should be rephrased to read: “Are the Democrats really that tone
deaf and far removed from reality that they would push ahead with
healthcare ‘reform’ in spite of overwhelming public opposition and a pressing
need to deal with the economic crisis that is daily reducing Americans to
penury?”

Hal Lewis,
professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara, said:

Sure they
will, they are tone deaf. All the polls, capped by the Massachusetts election,
say that the American people don’t want it. It takes a special kind of
arrogance for elected representatives to simply ignore this, and the current
White House crowd has that arrogance in spades. I suspect that the Congressmen
especially are scared stiff, with their plush sinecures on the line in
November. It may turn out to be an interesting year.