Listen to NPR’s On Point: It’s been 10 years since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision on Citizens United. We’ll look back at the last decade and take stock of the fallout. Guests Carrie Levine, senior reporter at the Center for … Continue reading
Category Archives: campaign finance
Brendan Fischer for Slate. … Continue reading
Abby Wood for The Monkey Cage. … Continue reading
WaPo: Trump’s vaunted political money machine is helping drive record sums to the Republican National Committee, and not just from the same donors who supported him in 2016. Enticed by exclusive gatherings and ecstatic about the president’s tax cuts, an eclectic … Continue reading
New report from the National Institute on Money in Politics. … Continue reading
Release via email about what will be a very useful compilation: This week marks the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That decision, together with its offspring, were the major catalysts for … Continue reading
Reupping this Slate piece of mine that ran in December, on what the opinion has meant in the last decade: In 2010, the largest reported individual contributors to federal campaigns in American politics were Robert and Doylene Perry, owners of … Continue reading
Brad Smith WSJ oped. … Continue reading
Covered on the Business Scholarship Podcast. … Continue reading
Video: ACS held a panel discussion on the state of campaign finance on January 16, 2020. Titled “Revisiting Campaign Finance Regulation 10 Years After Citizens United,” the event featured Jason Abel, Lee Goodman, Chisun Lee, and Ciara Torres-Spelliscy and was moderated by Michael Tomasky. A decade after the … Continue reading
Listen on Ricochet: On October 4, 2019, the Gray Center co-hosted “The Administration of Democracy⏤The George Mason Law Review’s Second Annual Symposium on Administrative Law.” For the second annual symposium, scholars wrote papers on such fundamental questions as: Is nonpartisan campaign-finance … Continue reading
WSJ: After Donald Trump’s election, Lev Parnas saw a chance to cash in on his connections.The Florida businessman and Trump donor was courting investors for a real-estate project. He took one of them, Roman Nasirov, at the time the head … Continue reading
NYT: President Trump’s re-election campaign plans to step up its efforts to capitalize on so-called bundlers, supporters who can raise money from friends and business associates in increments up to $2,800, the legal limit for a level of giving that … Continue reading
Marketplace reports on the indispensable work of the Center for Responsive Politics. I relied most recently on their work in my Slate piece, The Decade of Citizens United. … Continue reading
Marketplace reports. … Continue reading
Scott Blackburn analysis for IFS. … Continue reading
Another Brennan Center report for CU@10. … Continue reading
“Small Donor Public Finance in New York State: Major Innovations – With a Catch,” by Michael Malbin and Brendan Glavin, available here (PDF). From the press release: On January 1, 2020, New York became only the second state in this … Continue reading
Hard to believe, but one week from today will mark the 10th birthday of Citizens United. To help us commemorate/mourn the occasion, the Center for Responsive Politics has this report, “More money, less transparency: A decade under Citizens United.” And … Continue reading
Seattle Times: The Seattle City Council voted Monday to ban most political spending by “foreign-influenced corporations,” in a move that could hinder attempts by multinational tech titans to influence the city’s elections…. The city’s new ban applies to corporations with a single non-United … Continue reading
From the Center for Public Integrity. Hint: it involves the FEC. … Continue reading
Bloomberg on today’s order in N.Y. Republican State Comm. v. SEC, a First Amendment challenge to SEC Rule 2030, which regulates “placement agents” who solicit government business after making campaign contributions. … Continue reading
NYT: “Michael R. Bloomberg on Saturday did not rule out spending a billion dollars of his own money on the 2020 presidential race, even if he does not win the Democratic nomination, and said he would mobilize his well-financed political operation … Continue reading
AP: ” A big chunk of Fair Fight’s haul came as a single $5 million donation from Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg in December, according to a report filed with the Georgia state ethics commission.” … Continue reading
AP: Bernie Sanders says he doesn’t want a super PAC. Instead, he has Our Revolution, a nonprofit political organization he founded that functions much the same as one….Now, with less than one month to go before the Iowa caucuses, Our … Continue reading
Politico: A prolific California donor who pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations now faces a fresh charge for allegedly trying to stymie an investigation into the source of money he donated to the Trump inauguration committee. Prosecutors in the Southern … Continue reading
In the wake of substantial spending by Amazon (and others) in 2019 city council elections, Seattle contemplates a Clean Campaigns Act purporting to limit contributions to Super PACs, and to limit spending from corporations with more than 1% ownership from … Continue reading
Two stories today about campaign funds active longer than their campaigners. One focuses on FEC requests for explanation from retired officeholders still spending from campaign accounts. The other describes the plans that Rep. Cummings had for his unspent campaign money … Continue reading
A HuffPost piece on the other side of the odd horserace money count I mentioned last week: Allies of President Donald Trump gloated last week at the news that his campaign outraised each of the Democratic presidential candidates. But when … Continue reading
A piece in the Atlantic on the governance options available to billionaires: When people think about the political relevance of Michael Bloomberg’s money, they tend to think about how his massive spending helps his campaigns: the record $261 million he … Continue reading
The Hill: Lobbyists and lawyers who specialize in U.S. elections wrote to President Trump and congressional leaders on Monday, urging the confirmation of another federal election commissioner to end “an untenable situation.”The Federal Election Commission (FEC), the government’s campaign watchdog … Continue reading
Bloomberg: An unusually large number of amicus briefs filed by friends of a charity tied to the Koch brothers have flooded the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the justices to nix a California law requiring charities to disclose their largest donors … Continue reading
I missed this a few days ago. The money quote: McSally suggested last month that outside groups should pitch in to help. “We need close air support to show up. There’s outside groups. We can’t talk to them. We can’t … Continue reading
Former WWE star Rhino was a 2016 candidate for Congress … and seems to think that the rigors of campaign finance compliance may have impacted his last run in the WWE. … Continue reading
Alaska Public Media reports on the progress of a proposition calling for a top-four primary, ranked-choice voting, changes to appointments to local election boards, and campaign finance reform, among others. … Continue reading
I missed this last week: Direct donations to campaigns for the Florida Legislature are limited to $1,000. . . . [But t]he amount of money a company or individual can donate to a legislator’s PAC is limitless. . . . … Continue reading
Bruce Freed, Dan Carroll, and Karl Sandstrom, at the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, connect proposed SEC rule changes, raising ownership thresholds and limiting repeat attempts for shareholder proxy fights, to the battle over disclosure of corporate political … Continue reading
The WaPo summarizes the reported candidate and party committee hauls for 2019 ($463 million for Trump and the RNC, for example). It seems fair to compare RNC solo fundraising to DNC solo fundraising, and Trump’s re-elect to Obama’s 2012 re-elect. … Continue reading
Ian Millhiser critiques what he sees as a disconnect between the Chief’s year-end report on the judiciary and our democracy, and the Chief’s actions on the judiciary and our democracy. … Continue reading
Greenberg Traurig, in The National Law Review, have you covered on some of the basics. … Continue reading
Bloomberg (the press entity, not the candidate) reviews the FEC docket. … Continue reading
The Virginia Mercury looks at the legislative session ahead. … Continue reading
Here come the allegations of unlawful coordination. And with it, your reminder that, as Dan Tokaji and Renata Strause explained years ago, in assessing the legality of campaign coordination, there’s often a “gap between the line the law draws and … Continue reading
Campaigns & Elections magazine looks to the year ahead. … Continue reading
SCOTUSblog has a running decade-in-review series, and Citizens United occupies 14% of the space so far. … Continue reading
The NYT reviews Bloomberg’s ad blitz: The effort, which is targeting seven battleground states where polls show Mr. Trump is likely to be competitive in November, is just one piece of an advertising campaign that is unrivaled in scope and … Continue reading
The Center for Public Integrity with year-end facts and figures. … Continue reading
The Philadelphia Inquirer digs into presidential primary bundler disclosure. … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy offers a cheery take on the Thompson v. Hebdon contribution limits case out of Alaska, in the Harvard Law Review blog. … Continue reading
Politifact reports. … Continue reading