Campaign Finance Expert Robert E. Mutch (“Bob”), 1940-2022

election law biz

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.

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Quote of the Day (Sam Issacharoff on SCOTUS Removing Election Guardrails)

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“The majority of today should always fear that it may find itself in the minority tomorrow and that its rules can be used against it. . . . What happens when this breaks down? What happens if the majority of today sees this as the last chance to take it all?”

–Sam Issacharoff, quoted in Adam Liptak’s must-read piece, “In Election Cases, Supreme Court Keeps Removing Guardrails.”

I address this Supreme Court history, and why I told Adam I think we may be heading back to the early 1960s in terms of judicial protection of voting and elections, in Richard L. Hasen, The Stagnation, Retrogression, and Potential Pro-Voter Transformation of U.S. Election Law, 134 Yale Law Journal 1673 (2025).

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“Inside Democrats’ risky gambit to ‘fight fire with fire’ over election maps”

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WaPo deep dive:

Their exodus, coordinated with top Democrats outside Texas, is the latest flash point in a rapidly spreading fight over election maps — embodying Democrats’ newly combative posture on redistricting. After Texas Republicans initiated an unusual mid-decade effort to redraw their maps at President Donald Trump’s urging, state Democrats have staged a high-profile protest; liberal governors have moved to retaliate with new maps of their own; and many onetime gerrymandering critics have joined the cause. “Fight fire with fire,” as many Democrats have recently put it.

But the party is facing an uphill climb and risks of a letdown. Texas Democrats are likely to stall but not ultimately prevent Republicans from enacting a new map that would add five new U.S. House seats that voted for Trump by double-digit percentages. In several blue states, Democrats must clear legal hurdles that their red-state counterparts don’t face as both parties try to overhaul election maps beyond Texas.

“Fundamentally, this has the potential to be the gerrymandering apocalypse that may have been inevitable given that for both parties, the ends have increasingly justified the means,” said David Wasserman, senior elections analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Republicans are more likely to get their way, Wasserman said, even if Democrats are able to offset GOP gains in Texas.

The outcome could have major implications for 2026 and the final two years of Trump’s term. Republicans are defending a 219-212 House majority, with four vacancies, and even marginal shifts could be pivotal….

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