NPR reports. The report concludes:
But conservative critics of disclosure don’t like it either. At the symposium, campaign finance lawyer Stefan Passantino invoked the old saying that sunlight is the best disinfectant. And he added this: “Sometimes sunlight is a disinfectant, and sometimes sunlight causes cancer.”
The conservative argument against disclosure rests on a Supreme Court case from the 1950s, in which Alabama officials wanted to shut down the NAACP by exposing its members and organizers.
Passantino admitted it’s not a great analogy, suggesting that corporations that supply politicians with seven-figure checks are like civil rights workers who were beaten or killed in the old Jim Crow South.