Category Archives: recall elections

Recall Elections Blog: “A federal district court has ruled that recalls are different than regular elections for the purpose of the state’s $800 campaign finance donation limit. Here’s the press release from the Institute for Justice and here’s a copy of the decision.”

Beth Garrett has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Minnesota Law Review).  Here is the abstract:

In the ever-evolving jurisprudence of campaign finance, one principle has endured: the rules governing candidate elections are analyzed differently from the rules governing ballot measures because the latter elections have been found not to implicate the state’s legitimate interest in combatting quid pro quo corruption. It should now be apparent to even a casual observer of the initiative process, however, that candidates are very involved in ballot measures; they use initiatives to influence turnout in elections in which they are also running, and they resort to initiatives to adopt policy change they cannot enact through the traditional legislative system. The clear relationship between candidates and direct democracy is formally present in a context of growing salience: recalls. In this article, I use recall elections as a way to consider the current state of campaign finance jurisprudence as it relates to all the mechanisms of direct democracy; recalls provide a different framework to assess campaign finance rules because they are explicitly hybrid elections, combining a ballot question about the recall of an official and, sometimes simultaneously, the election of a successor. Part I will lay out the structure of the recall process, particularly in California and Wisconsin, the two states in which statewide recalls of governors have shaken the political establishment and caught the attention of the nation. Part II will analyze the constitutional issues raised by campaign finance regimes that include contribution limitations affecting recall elections, particularly in light of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Part III will extend this analysis and argue that the conclusions reached about permissible regulatory structures in the context of recalls implicate the way states and municipalities regulate money in ballot measure campaigns generally.

I read an earlier draft of this paper and highly recommend it.  Beth’s statements about equality in campaign finance at the end of the paper are especially notable.

City Ethics: “Talk about independent expenditures usually refers to such expenditures in support, or more often in opposition to, federal candidates. At the local level, the major independent expenditures tend to come from unions, both public service unions and construction unions. There are also cases where independent expenditures come from contractors and others seeking direct benefits from the candidates they support or oppose. This can look very much like a payoff for favors done and/or for future favors, generally referred to as pay to play. One such case has arisen in Montebello, CA, a small city of 62,000. According to an article posted yesterday evening on the Whittier Daily News website, a company that had recently obtained a no-bid $150 million, 15-year refuse hauling contract gave “close to $353,000″ (or nearly $14 per registered voter) to a 2009 Say No on Recall campaign committee it created. Two of the council members were targeted for recall largely due to approval of the refuse contract. The small refuse companies that had formerly done the work provided most of the funding for the pro-recall committee, according to an article in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.”

This item appears at the Wisconsin Reporter.

Dan Eggen explores.

NYT editorial: “As Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin faces a well deserved recall vote next month after stripping public unions of their bargaining rights, voters are discovering the generosity of Diane Hendricks. Ms. Hendricks, the billionaire chairwoman of the nation’s largest roofing and siding wholesaler, wrote a check for $500,000 last month to help defend Governor Walker, a Republican, against his Democratic challenger, Tom Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee.”

Dan Bice explains.

Time reports.

See here and here.