Political parties can now give unlimited contributions to San Diego city candidates following a federal judge’s ruling that the $1,000 cap on such donations — created by city officials in response to a previous ruling — violated the First Amendment.
Friday’s decision by U.S. District Court Judge Irma E. Gonzalez doesn’t give parties unfettered ability to give money to candidates. The parties must still comply with other limitations that require them to identify individual donors for each $500 contributed to a candidate.
This part I’ve bolded above is very important, and one I did not discuss in my posting on this case yesterday. [Disclosure: I am one of the City’s attorneys in this case.] The point is that although the judge barred the City’s law limiting political party contributions to candidates, the money going from the party to candidates must come from contributions to the party (1) from individuals (2) in amounts no greater than $500 (3) per candidate per election. That means no corporate or other non-entity donations flowing through parties to candidates and no large individual contributions flowing from parties to candidates. As the judge wrote: “Despite Plaintiffs’ arguments to the contrary, what is involved here is not contributions by political parties, but rather the contributions that they can solicit from others.
Unlike the former, the City has a strong anti-circumvent interest in preventing the individuals from contributing large amounts of money to the political parties in circumvention of their own individual direct contribution limits.”
Finally, and very significantly, as the UT article explains: “The court upheld several other city campaign finance laws such as the ban on corporations and labor unions from contributing directly to candidates, the $500 maximum individual donation to candidates and a prohibition on candidates accepting money from donors more than a year before an election.”