See here. If the FEC deadlocks, Price will have to decide whether to go forward with his plan and risk liability for doing so. But given how lax FEC enforcement is these days, it is not clear how much of … Continue reading
Category Archives: campaign finance
FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub (whose full statement is here): BREAKING: @FEC's Republicans block all investigation of & enforcement against Russians Torshin & Butina re the NRA & the 2016 presidential election. Result: FEC does nothing to find out the truth … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming Harvard Law and Policy Review). Here is the abstract: The Roberts Supreme Court has, or to be more precise the five most conservative members of the Roberts Court have, spent the … Continue reading
Richard Pierce has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming George Mason Law Review). Here is the abstract: This essay is a contribution to a symposium on “The Administration of Democracy.” Professor Pierce argues in support of a system of campaign … Continue reading
A hole in Arizona campaign disclosure laws. … Continue reading
Watch here: The Atlantic article is: Unlimited Donations to Candidates, Coming Soon? … Continue reading
Mark Murray: The lesson here: Being a billionaire with a big email list matters more than any previous debate performance — or campaign work on the ground in the early states. https://t.co/R8Z14kvUZO— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) August 13, 2019 … Continue reading
Unanimous opinion in National Association for Gun Rights v. Mangan. … Continue reading
Ed McCaffery has posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: There is too much money in American politics, and too much of it comes from too few citizens. Mega-donors like Sheldon Adelson or Tom Steyer make $100 million … Continue reading
NYT: But the Supreme Court’s support for campaign finance disclosure laws has a built-in exemption for people who can show a realistic threat of harassment, and the renewed scrutiny on Trump donors has also raised questions about what qualifies as … Continue reading
Bill Kristol: We can't count on Trump for election security. And Mitch McConnell is blocking the Senate from even considering bipartisan election security legislation. Enough. This ad from @ForTheRuleOfLaw is on the air in DC and KY. pic.twitter.com/RdbmIcRaNy— Bill Kristol … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy blogs. … Continue reading
Politico: Joaquin Castro, a Democratic congressman from Texas and chairman of the presidential campaign of his twin brother, Julián, fired back on Tuesday after being castigated on social media for tweeting the names and occupations of his constituents who’d maxed … Continue reading
WaPo: About a fifth of donors have given to more than one Democratic presidential nominee in the first six months of this year, pointing to the difficulty candidates face distinguishing themselves among those giving small amounts at a time.That revelation … Continue reading
NYT: State prosecutors in Manhattan subpoenaed President Trump’s family business on Thursday, reviving an investigation into the company’s role in hush-money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to people briefed on the matter.The subpoena, issued by the Manhattan … Continue reading
Daily Beast: Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is using a nonprofit group he advises to raise money for his U.S. Senate campaign, and legal experts say one recent fundraising push likely ran afoul of federal campaign finance laws.On … Continue reading
The court ruled that if the IRS wants to enforce such a rule, it has to go through the notice and comment period. … Continue reading
David Graham for The Atlantic. … Continue reading
WaPo: Among New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s donors to his presidential campaign is a vice president of a leading pharmaceutical company. The senior vice president of Comcast who oversees the company’s lobbying efforts hosted a fundraiser for former vice president Joe … Continue reading
ProPublica and Politico: After recruiting thousands of donors for the American Conservative Union — the powerful organization behind the annual CPAC conference — a Republican political operative pushed the same contributors to give millions to a PAC that promised to … Continue reading
CPI reports. … Continue reading
I have written this piece for The Atlantic. It begins: During the George W. Bush administration, then–Solicitor General Paul Clement successfully defended the constitutionality of the 2002 McCain-Feingold law, which tightened electioneering and fundraising regulations. Can Clement now get traction … Continue reading
CPI reports. … Continue reading
STAT: Take the case of Pfizer (PFE), Merck (MRK), and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). Each company sells contraceptive products. Pfizer markets Depo-Provera, Merck sells Nexplanon, and J&J markets Ortho-Novum.But last year, all three drug makers donated large sums to the … Continue reading
Open Secrets: Deadlocked on a party-line vote, the Federal Election Commission has dismissed a complaint that Hillary Clinton’s campaign illegally coordinated with a super PAC during the 2016 presidential election cycle.Continuing a recent trend with the embattled regulatory agency that … Continue reading
Politico: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and other leading Democratic presidential candidates have sworn off contributions from Washington lobbyists as a way to insulate themselves from those who might try to shape their agendas if elected.But they’re hardly walling … Continue reading
Bruce F. Freed, Dan Carroll, and Karl J. Sandstrom blog. … Continue reading
The NY Post discusses some questionable state-PAC spending on a federal race. A related Politico story notes that de Blasio is claiming that his presidential campaign launch video was not a presidential campaign expense. … Continue reading
The WSJ covers the House Oversight letter. … Continue reading
Following on this story, the letter is here. … Continue reading
Paul Ryan in Just Security on the announced end of the Stormy Daniels campaign finance case. … Continue reading
And maybe there’s an explanation after all. … Continue reading
The Intercept traces funding from foreign nationals through American corporations to super PACs. … Continue reading
Relatedly, the latest proposed amendment to overturn Citizens United was filed yesterday. It would ban private funding of support for or opposition to candidates if the funding isn’t a donation to a candidate’s campaign. I’m not a fan. … Continue reading
On whether she had direct knowledge of payments to Stormy Daniels, or whether she was “present” when Trump discussed Daniels. The documents unsealed in the Cohen warrant today seem to suggest there may be more to the story. … Continue reading
The Campaign Finance Institute parses the 2Q returns. … Continue reading
Interesting. And according to the story, unusual: Neither Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch, nor Eric Holder—the three prior attorneys general—made payments to either party committees or senators ahead of confirmation hearings and votes. Holder gave $250 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign … Continue reading
Unsealed copies of the Cohen search warrant materials were released today based on the close of the campaign finance investigation. Here’s the cover letter. Zoe Tillman’s got links to the docs. Phone records in the documents show Cohen spoke with … Continue reading
CNN, The Hill, NYT, WSJ have reports. Looks like the leaks were accurate after all. … Continue reading
A new paper about Seattle’s campaign finance voucher program, from Brian McCabe and Jennifer Heerwig. I’m looking forward to reading this one. The abstract: In this paper, we evaluate whether an innovative new campaign finance program in Seattle, Washington shifted … Continue reading
The Trump takeover of the GOP is reflected in the recent campaign finance disclosures. The subhead of the piece: “Some of the same donors who bankrolled anti-Trump efforts in 2016 are at the center of the president’s reelection.” … Continue reading
San Francisco puts a measure on the November ballot aimed at disclosing the top funders of committees, rather than just the committee name itself. … Continue reading
Chock full of election-law goodies. Among other pieces: Elizabeth Warren, Foreword (on corruption and faith in government)Jeffrey Clements, “But It Will Happen”: A Constitutional Amendment to Secure Political Equality in Election Spending and RepresentationViki Harrison, How One State Legislature Grappled … Continue reading
Here’s last week’s roundup of the latest at the FEC. Includes, among other things, an advisory opinion allowing a vendor to offer cybersecurity services to campaigns at low- to no-cost, and an advisory opinion allowing a congressional campaign to distribute … Continue reading
A nice summary here of some of the various reasons why campaign accounts may stay open long after the campaigners are out of office. … Continue reading
And a nice summary here of some of the various reasons for seeking grassroots contributions. … Continue reading
Spotlight on Bullock’s spotlight on campaign finance and the Copper Kings. … Continue reading
One Floridian commentator’s take on the flow of funds between PACs and c4s. FWIW, I’m not sure the particular objection highlighted here makes much sense. It protests the funding of a c4 from donations collected for a PAC, on the … Continue reading
The AP reports on new proposals for disclaimers on Facebook ads about pending legislation. … Continue reading
Reports from CNN and The Hill on potential campaign-finance charges against executives in the Trump Organization. FWIW, I fully believe that the sources are being accurately quoted, but I’m always pretty skeptical about underlying representations of whether prosecutions are or … Continue reading