Paul Blumenthal for HuffPo:
During courtroom debate over the McCutcheon decision, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli expressed concern that political parties could create joint fundraising committees to allow a single candidate to solicit a $1 million-plus contribution, which could be distributed to a collection of federal and state party committees. State parties could then transfer this money to other, more important state parties (for example, those in swing states) to benefit the candidate.
Justice Samuel Alito, without any apparent knowledge of similar prior arrangements by parties and candidates, declared, “Now, how — how realistic is that? How realistic is it that all of the state party committees, for example, are going to get money and they’re all going to transfer it to one candidate?” Alito went on to call such situations “wild hypotheticals” that “certainly lack any empirical support.”
Chief Justice John Roberts also dismissed these concerns, among others raised by supporters of the aggregate limits, as “divorced from reality.”
However, Clinton’s campaign proved that Verrilli and other critics were right on September 16, when her campaign expanded the Hillary Victory Fund, the super joint fundraising committee it created earlier this year with the Democratic National Committee, to include 33 state parties.
A maximum annual donation of $666,700 (totaling approximately $1.3 million in two years) will be split up among committees — with $2,700 going to the Clinton campaign, a maximum of $334,000 to the DNC and $10,000 to each state party committee. If Clinton wins her party’s nomination, those state party accounts could transfer funds she raises to the party accounts in swing states, enabling donors to exceed the $10,000 “base” contribution limit to an individual state party…
In exchange for their contributions, the new million-dollar donors sought by parties and presidential candidates will receive access to dinners, retreats, insider phone calls and opportunities to talk to top lawmakers and candidates.
This dynamic now mimics the soft money landscape Congress banned in 2002 and the Supreme Court upheld in 2003. In its 2003 McConnell v. FEC decision, the Supreme Court found that candidates’ practice of soliciting large contributions for their direct benefit raised concerns about both actual corruption and the appearance of corruption. In the court’s eyes, this justified new restrictions on campaign contributions and spending.
Yup.