CMC Interest Groups Course

Monday, September 14, 2020

The NRA's Slide

Sara Fischer and Alayna Treene at Axios:

The National Rifle Association has spent $9.2 million on political expenditures this cycle, about one-sixth of the $54.4 million reported in 2016, according to Federal Election Commission data tracked by Open Secrets.

Why it matters: While the group has vowed to support President Trump's re-election, mounting fees from fights with regulators, internal infighting and the pandemic have devastated its finances — and could mute its future influence.

By the numbers: The NRA has spent less than one-fifth on TV ads this year compared to what it spent in 2016, according to data from Advertising Analytics.
So far this year, it's spent $4.7 million on TV ads compared with $27.34 million through the end of 2016.
It's spent about $3.7 million for online ads this cycle, mostly Facebook and some Google ads, per Advertising Analytics. The group doesn't track digital advertising dating back to 2016.
NRA spokesperson Amy Hunter told Axios that given that it's still September, it "wouldn't be fair to compare where we are now with our spending with what we spent total in 2016."
To her point, about 56% of the NRA's television ad spend last cycle occurred in October. But according to Advertising Analytics, the group hasn't booked any ads yet for October or November.
And it still spent more than $10 million through September 2016. It's spent less than half of that so far through mid-September 2020.

Saturday, September 12, 2020

Theresa Greenfield's Campaign Runs Ad Against Joni Ernst on Campaign Finance

The race for Joni Ernst's (R) Senate seat is one of the races to watch this election as Theresa Greenfield (D) tries to flip the seat. The race is one of the eight races categorized by RealClearPolitics as a toss up and millions of dollars have gone into the race on both sides of the aisle.

On July 15th, Greenfield tweeted a new ad highlighting Joni Ernst's history with campaign finance laws, saying that “Joni Ernst was caught knowingly accepting illegal contributions from corporations and had to pay the largest penalty EVER for an Iowa politician.”

In their filing in 2017, the FEC levied a $14,500 civil penalty against the Joni for Iowa campaign and its treasurer for having “received excessive and prohibited contributions totaling $37,190.00 for the 2014 General Election” from 26 individuals, one partnership, one multicandidate political action committee, one nonmulticandidate political action committee and three corporations.

More information on the specifics of the campaign finance violation here.

Friday, September 11, 2020

Higher Education Contributions

Kery Murakami at Inside Higher Ed:

Though the nation finds itself deeply divided, it’s clear whom employees at the nation’s higher education institutions are supporting financially in the presidential race.

According to federal elections records, those who listed their employer as a college or university have given Democratic candidate Joe Biden about $4.9 million in contributions, more than five times as much as the $890,000, including donations from for-profit college executives, that they have given President Trump.

The contributions to Biden have come widely, from about 8,800 donors, compared to the 2,800 higher education employees who want to see another four years of a Trump administration.

Even more pronounced are whom those college or university employees, who listed their occupation either as professor, instructor or teacher, are giving to. The educators have given about $2.7 million to Biden, according to Federal Election Commission records in the election cycle beginning in January 2019 -- or seven times as much as the $353,00 they have to Trump.

SEE DATA AT OPEN SECRETS

Thursday, September 10, 2020

The Age of Outside Spending

For Tuesday, read Schatzinger, ch. 3-5.

1971 Election laws: The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971 and the 1971 Revenue Act were passed, initiating fundamental changes in campaign finance laws. FECA required full reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures and also limited spending on media advertisements. In addition, FECA provided the legislative framework for PACs established by unions and corporations, which allowed unions and corporations to use treasury funds to establish, operate and solicit voluntary contributions for federal PACs.
The Revenue Act allowed citizens to check a box on their tax forms authorizing the federal government to use one of their tax dollars to finance Presidential campaigns in the general election. From the time this was first implemented in 1973, enough money had been collected to fund the 1976 election George W. Bush began the exodus from the public finance system in 2000, when he refused to take matching funds for the primaries and caucuses. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first candidate to decline public financing in the general election. In 2016, only one candidate took public money for the primary campaign: Martin O'Malley
1974 Amendments: Following the documentation of campaign abuses in the 1972 elections, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) was established and given jurisdiction in civil enforcement, authority to write regulations and responsibility for monitoring compliance with FECA. The President, Speaker of the House and President pro tempore of the Senate were each allowed to appoint two voting members of the commission, and the Secretary of the Senate and Clerk of the House were designated as nonvoting Commissioners.
The 1974 amendments also provided for partial Federal funding, in the form of matching funds, for Presidential primary candidates. Public funding was also extended to political parties to finance their Presidential nominating conventions. Congress also enacted strict limits on both contributions and expenditures for all federal candidates and political committees involved in federal elections.
Buckley v. Valeo: Portions of the 1974 amendments were challenged as unconstitutional, and a lawsuit was filed by Senator James L. Buckley against the Secretary of the Senate, Francis R. Valeo. The Court upheld contribution limits, but overturned expenditure limits, saying that limiting expenditures would limit the quantity of campaign speech, which in turn violated First Amendment rights. In addition, provisions of the law regarding public funding, disclosure and record keeping were upheld. The Court also found that the method of appointing members to the FEC violated the principle of separation of powers. ALSO NOTE THE "MAGIC WORDS" FOOTNOTE
1976 Amendments: In response to the Court's ruling, Congress repealed expenditure limits and revised the method of appointing Commissioners. Beginning in 1976, the President appointed six Commissioners, to be confirmed by the Senate. These amendments also included provisions to limit the scope of PAC fundraising by corporations and labor organizations by specifying who could be solicited for contributions, and how those solicitations could be conducted. In addition, a single contribution limit was adopted for all PACs established by the same union or corporation.
1979 Amendments: Following the 1976 and 1978 elections, Congress further amended the law to include provisions to simplify reporting requirements, encourage party activity at state and local levels and increased public funding grants for Presidential nominating conventions.
2002: The McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) was passed, which sought to limit the use of "soft money." Soft money is money raised by national parties and political action committees for "get out the vote" campaign efforts and other organization-building activities. This money wasn't regulated by the federal government, and parties were raising unlimited funds for these activities but using them for purposes aside from voter registration. Notably, 501(c) and 527 organizations were exempted from the soft money ban, though they were banned from running ads prior to primaries and elections, and from providing direct advocacy for a candidate.
2003: The BCRA was sent to the Supreme Court via suits filed by Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell (R), the California Democratic Party and National Rifle Association, under the complaint that the law was too broad and limited their First Amendment rights. The Court upheld the law in McConnell v. The Federal Election Commission.
2007: The Supreme Court reversed their on issue ads in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc, saying that limits on electioneering spending by nonprofits were unconstitutional.
2008: Senator Barack Obama became the first presidential candidate from a major party not to take public financing for the general election, citing a broken system for his actions.
2010: In Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court held that independent expenditures by corporations and labor unions were protected by the First Amendment, which struck down BCRA provisions that banned these types of expenditures. A few months later, the decision from Citizens United was applied to Speechnow.org v. FEC in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Judges decided arguments that unlimited independent expenditures would lead to corruption were invalid after the Citizens United decision.
2012: For the first time, both presidential candidates decline public financing. Also, the Supreme Court decided that Citizens United applied to Montana's 1912 legislation banning direct corporate political spending in American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock.
2014: The recent Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon v. FEC ruled that aggregate contribution limits infringed on First Amendment rights. This decision removes a cap on the amount of money any single donor, including PACs, can give to candidates or party committees. Previously, the limit had been a total of $48,600 every two years for all federal candidates and an aggregate of $74,600 to political parties and committees. There is no limit to the number of PACs that can exist, so donors could theoretically increase their contributions to certain candidates considerably if they had enough PACs supporting them. The base limits for campaign contributions of $2,600 for individual candidates and $5,000 for PACs remain in effect

Outside money

IMPORTANT NEW CASE ON DARK MONEY DISCLOSURE

A glossary

"Electioneering"

Outside spending totals for 2020

Update from the Wesleyan Media Project

Presidential Campaign Finance and 2020 Super PACs

Elena Schneider at Politico:

Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee raised $210 million in August, falling $154 million short of Joe Biden’s haul over the same period.

Biden and the Democratic National Committee previously announced raising a stunning $365 million last month, a record-shattering total that Trump failed to match. Neither campaign has yet released their cash-on-hand totals, but last month’s fundraising disparity means Biden may have closed Trump’s once-formidable cash advantage.

...

{ NRCC spokesperson Ken] Spain added that the Trump campaign “has already sent up the bat signal to the donor community and it's likely they will respond in kind.”

Part of that response is coming through pro-Trump outside groups, who have helped to even out that TV spending disparity. On Wednesday, America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC, announced $22 million in digital and TV spending on behalf of the president in a slate of battleground states, including Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The new total comes on top of the group’s $18.6 million spending commitment in September.

Last month, senior Republicans launched another super PAC, Preserve America, to boost the president. It is backed by several GOP megadonors, including Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus.

Dino Grandoni at The Washington Post: [Note the threat theme, below. Cigler 40-42]

To defeat President Trump, a big-spending green group is planning to drop more money than ever on the 2020 election.

A super PAC affiliated with the League of Conservation Voters and related groups is aiming to spend more than $100 million to elect Joe Biden and other Democrats in November, breaking the Washington-based organization’s previous record of $85 million in 2018.

The prospect of granting Trump four more years to unwind climate regulations is motivating deep-pocketed Democratic donors to give to Biden. In opening their wallets to green campaign groups, they are signaling their desire for legislation to address rising global temperatures. A similar surge in donations helped Democrats retake the House in 2018, say environmentalists.

“A lot of people realize how high the stakes are,” said Pete Maysmith, senior vice president of campaigns at the LCV Victory Fund, the super PAC affiliated with the LCV. “Whether it’s wildfires blanketing the West with smoke, whether it’s the hurricanes hitting the Gulf Coast, the flooding inundating the Midwest, the time is now to act on climate change.”