Roll Call reports. … Continue reading
Category Archives: campaign finance
Issue One report. … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
No surprise here. I’ve always found the constitutional arguments against it incredibly weak. … Continue reading
Docket at SCOTUS, and here’s more from CREW on the case. … Continue reading
WaPo: Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg has decided to donate significant components of his shuttered presidential campaign to the Democratic Party, a historic bequest that includes an $18 million cash infusion to organize for the general election in swing states.The … Continue reading
Mother Jones: Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles this week described a dizzying array of secret foreign lobbying by a major donor to both political parties—a new twist in a case that could reveal whether there were foreign efforts to funnel … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
Buffalo News: A State Supreme Court justice has voided new rules adopted by a special commission paving the way for public financing of elections in New York State while making it harder for minor parties to qualify for the ballot.Justice Ralph … Continue reading
Politico: The Federal Election Commission — which is charged with policing federal campaign finance law — has been sidelined for months leading up to the presidential election because it lost its quorum. But a hearing Tuesday to fill a seat … Continue reading
WaPo: Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg has decided to form an independent expenditure campaign that will absorb hundreds of his presidential campaign staffers in six swing states to work to elect the Democratic nominee this fall.The group, with a … Continue reading
NYT: In an unprecedented effort to self-finance a presidential campaign — which some rivals derided as an attempt to buy the White House — Mr. Bloomberg’s bid cost him more than half a billion dollars in advertising alone. He also spent … Continue reading
Bloomberg: A watchdog group is seeking to force Facebook Inc. to disclose who paid for online political ads on the social media site in 2018 that promoted Green Party candidates in certain House and Senate races.The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has filed … Continue reading
WSJ: TV viewers in Super Tuesday states know this: Michael Bloomberg and his presidential campaign are on almost every channel. All day. And nearly all night.The former New York City mayor appears on presidential primary ballots for the first time … Continue reading
ProPublica: Former Donald Trump campaign CEO and chief strategist Steve Bannon used a private jet apparently owned by a wealthy Chinese businessman to fly to events to promote Republican congressional candidates in 2018.The previously unreported flights could run afoul of … Continue reading
NYT: To most supporters of Pete Buttigieg, the tweet probably seemed innocuous: A senior adviser to Mr. Buttigieg, Michael Halle, simply noted that the candidate’s military record would be an asset in Nevada.But critics say Mr. Halle’s tweet also served … Continue reading
Courthouse News Service reports. … Continue reading
Jim Bopp in the NLJ: The Democrat members of Congress and their media allies are totally off base. No President could effectively exercise his constitutional authority if his every interaction with foreign officials is subject to second-guessing under campaign finance … Continue reading
Lisa Graves oped in The Guardian. … Continue reading
New GAO report. … Continue reading
Dave Levinthal: 1/ NEW: Following today's House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on campaign finance, @FEC Chair Caroline Hunter sends pointed letter to @ProfCiara regarding her testimony about foreign spending in U.S. elections. pic.twitter.com/rfgnMwfvYw— Dave Levinthal (@davelevinthal) February 7, 2020 … Continue reading
Dave Levinthal thread starts here: 1/ A short thread about a news organization, the Trump campaign and a fundraising message …On Thursday, my colleague @JimSmall received a garden variety campaign solicitation from the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a … Continue reading
LOL. Watch here: … Continue reading
The SF Chronicle reports. … Continue reading
House Judiciary Committee subcommittee hearing Thursday. … Continue reading
NYT: Michael R. Bloomberg put more than $200 million of his personal fortune into his presidential campaign by the end of December, with the overwhelming bulk of that sum going to a mammoth advertising campaign on television and online, according to … Continue reading
Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (via How Appealing): A panel of federal appellate judges agreed Monday that a campaign contribution blackout law that has been in place in Arkansas since 1996 is probably unconstitutional. The panel upheld a preliminary injunction that U.S. … Continue reading
NYT: Ot became such a central slogan of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign that at rallies his supporters would chant the three words representing his pledge to take on big donors and special interests: “Drain the swamp.”But as President Trump … Continue reading
I spoke to June Grasso of Bloomberg about the case. … Continue reading
Open Secrets reports. … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
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
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