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Dave Levinthal profiles Craig Holman for the Washingtonian”

When Craig Holman first came to, he found himself in George Washington University Hospital hooked up to machines.

His ribs, hip, and knee were shattered. His ankle, too. He had suffered a brain bleed.

The victim of an early-March car crash—another driver struck Holman’s 2002 stick-shift Saturn after running a red light on Pennsylvania Avenue—Holman would spend a week in intensive care and three more in various hospital wards. Surgeries would follow surgeries. Much of the time, he couldn’t leave his bed without assistance.

And still he couldn’t stop thinking about Donald Trump.

For hours and hours, Holman would fixate on the newscasts emanating from the TV above his bed. Body broken, his mind seethed at what he saw as gross abuses of power by the President: firing thousands of federal workers, issuing massive tariffs, targeting law firms perceived to have worked against his political or personal interests, letting his Department of Government Efficiency run amok. Holman wasn’t happy with Congress, either, which he viewed as feckless, a legislature surrendering its constitutional clout to an overstepping executive.

“You’re sitting there, watching Trump on the news doing some obvious violation of the law, and you’re thinking, ‘I’d be filing a complaint right now if I were home!’ ” Holman says.

Of that, there’s little doubt. The 69-year-old Holman is a leading member of a peculiar Washington tribe: advocates for good government. Also known as “goo-goos,” they fight to regulate lobbying, limit the influence of money in politics, keep elected officials honest, and otherwise “drain the swamp” in the pre-Trumpian sense of the phrase.

For 23 years, Holman has been on the frontlines working as the government-­affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, the progressive nonprofit founded a half century ago by consumer advocate Ralph Nader. In the best of times, the job can feel thankless, even Sisyphean. Outnumbered and outspent, goo-goos perpetually push the rock of reform up Capitol Hill, only to be pulled back down by the stubborn gravity of wealth and self-interest.

And these are not the best of times. Between an ongoing explosion of political spending and Trump’s return to the White House, goo-goos are on their back foot, confronting a new crisis almost daily. To wit: As emergency workers rescued Holman by cutting through both his car and his beloved leather jacket, the President signed an executive order establishing a government Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, never mind that Trump is heavily invested in the World Liberty Financial crypto-trading platform and launched an eponymous cryptocurrency—$TRUMP coin—days before his inauguration.

I recently learned that Bob Mutch, who has written the most comprehensive and important histories of campaign finance regulation in the United States, died in August 2022.

Bob was a political scientist by training, but he wrote excellent histories of campaign finance law and politics in the United States, including two books that I constantly rely upon in my own research, Campaigns, Congress, and Courts: The Making of Federal Campaign Finance Law (Praeger 1988) and Buying the Vote: A History of Campaign Finance Reform (Oxford University Press 2014). The work is extremely careful, lively, and helpful, including some details that have not appeared in any other work on this history.

Here is the blurb I wrote for the Oxford book:

The book is no doubt the leading historical account of the debate over campaign finance regulation from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Mutch has mined a wealth of primary sources to paint the most detailed picture possible (consistent with the paucity of the early historical record) of the financing of U.S. federal campaigns and the national debate over that financing. Mutch usefully ties current judicial debate to the earlier historical record, providing valuable context and serving as a corrective to much of what passes for historical analysis in the U.S. Supreme Court’s campaign finance opinions.

Here is Michael Malbin’s review of that book, the Schaffner & LaRaja book, and my own Plutocrats United.

Bob was always generous with his time and his comments on other work. He gave great comments on my scholarship and we had a great, but intermittent correspondence; the last email I received from him came a few months before he passed, when he congratulated me on my move to UCLA.

Researcher Sam Garrett, writing in his personal capacity, passes along these thoughts: “Robert Mutch’s meticulous research was and is indispensable to how I learned about campaign finance in the United States.  His writing was thorough, clear, and enthusiastic.  Bob reminded us that campaign finance policy might be rooted in law, but also that debate–and good stories–about money and politics date to the founding of the republic and continue today.  He also didn’t stop at campaign finance.  Several years ago, when Bob spoke to my American University students, he gave us more than an hour—without notes—on his latest project, about George Washington’s family.  It was a privilege to know Bob and to continue learning from him.”

Bob apparently died without any immediate family, and I have been unable to find any obituary for him. So I thought it appropriate to say here at ELB how much he meant to many of us in the election law community. We will miss him, his spirit of inquiry, and his enthusiasm for studying our democracy to make it better.

A true legend pens his last regular column. Fortunately, Dan plans to write more, just on a less set schedule. Wishing him all the best in (semi-)retirement.

Dan Tokaji here. Thanks to Guy Charles for doing such a great job guest-blogging over the past week. I’m starting my annual two-week stint at the helm, so please feel free to send your suggestions my way (preferably with a link) through July 27.

Last week Rick Pildes covered the exciting news that Heather Gerken is going to head the Ford Foundation, after a successful stint as Yale Law School dean. And even better, as the NYT headline puts it, Ford Foundation’s New Leader Says She’ll Work to Protect Democracy. That work is urgent of course, and has been my focus and the focus of many of us in the field for the last few years. But to have Heather head up the Foundation’s efforts here is tremendously good news.

She helped to build the field of election law, advancing ideas of both theoretical and very practical experience. She has been an ELB contributor for many years. (She’s no longer going to be listed on the ELB masthead going forward, consistent with her move to the Foundation.)

Heather is not just a brilliant and generous scholar who will do great work to help safeguard American democracy. She’s thoughtful, compassionate, and always there to lift others up. In a word, she’s a mensch.

I’m grateful for her friendship, support, and her past service, and I look forward to seeing what she will do at the Foundation.

Florida Politics:

Florida State University’s Election Law Center now has a place in state statute, even if it didn’t receive full funding.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed legislation (SB 892) formally establishing the Center, which has existed since 2023 at the Tallahassee campus. Sen. Corey Simon, a Tallahassee Republican, spoke to the Senate Higher Education Appropriations Committee in April and explained the law’s impact.

“This bill builds on the accomplishments by enabling the Center to remain in existence and be eligible to receive recurring funds to continue its important work,” Simon said at the time.

But while the Senate OK’d the legislation, it did not approve $950,000 that the House Higher Education Budget Subcommittee wanted to include in the state budget.

This year, the Center hosted an anniversary looking back 25 years at the famous Bush v. Gore legal fight over Florida’s electoral votes in the 2000 Presidential Election.

In committee, Michael Morley, a professor at the Center, stressed that the work of the Center has always avoided taking political sides. “We’re nonpartisan, evidence based, objective,” he said….

The Center remains part of the FSU College of Law. It will study a range of legal issues around election law, including redistricting, election administration, voting rights, election integrity, cybersecurity and Florida Statutes specifically addressing elections.

The measure also expands areas that can be studied to include historical, empirical and comparative studies of specified topics, as well as philosophical and theoretical discussions on democracy, democratic theory and republicanism….

Congrats to Michael, Maureen, and FSU!

Here’s my yearly roundup of election law academic hires, promotions moves, visits, accolades:

James Alcorn started as the Senior Director of the Election Law Program at William and Mary law school.

Travis Crum was granted tenure and promoted to professor of law at Wash U. Law.

Josh Douglas became the Associate Dean for Research at the University of Kentucky Rosenberg College of Law.

Rebecca Green was awarded tenure and promoted to full professor, and continues to co-direct the Election Law Program at William and Mary law school.

Sarah Haan will be Professor of Law and Dean’s Research Scholar at Brooklyn Law School, where she will teach corporate law subjects and campaign finance law. 

Brianna Lennon will begin as an Adjunct at University of Missouri School of Law for Election Law (first class in Spring 2026).

Michael Latner of Cal Poly SLO is on leave working as Director of Research on Democratic Reform at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, Harvard Law School

Larry Norden will be taking a sabbatical from the Brennan Center this fall and visiting UC Berkeley, where he will be teaching a class on AI, Democracy and Elections at the law school, and will be in residence at the Goldman School of Public Policy as a Democracy Policy Fellow.

Mike Pitts now the Associate Dean for Research and was also just named the Samuel R. Rosen Professor of Law at IU McKinney.

Jeff Wice of New York Law School has been appointed as chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Election Law Committee

Congratulations all!

As always, when Rick loans the blog for a bit, I’m inevitably surprised by how much work it can entail, and humbled by the fact that he’s at the helm day in and day out. So I’ll close my guest stint with another note of profound thanks for his regular stewardship.

And thanks as well to Derek Muller, whose steady hands will be steering for the week to come. I’m sure he’ll welcome the tips and suggestions as well.

Derek, she’s all yours.