“Outsiders Coordinating With The Insiders”: ‘Citizens United’ Is Turning More Americans Into Bystanders
Are we spending our democracy into oblivion?
This is the time of year when media scribblers bemoan how nasty political campaigns have become. The complainers are accused of a dainty form of historical ignorance by defenders of mud-slinging who drag out Finley Peter Dunne’s 1895 assertion that “politics ain’t beanbag.” Politics has always been nasty, the argument goes, so we should get over it.
In fact, structural changes in our politics are making campaigns more mean and personal than ever. Even Dunne might be surprised. Outside groups empowered by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision are using mass media in ways that turn off Americans to democracy, aggravate divisions between the political parties and heighten animosities among citizens of differing views.
Studies of this year’s political advertising show that outside groups are blanketing the airwaves with messages far more negative than those purveyed by the candidates themselves. That shouldn’t surprise us in the least. “Candidates can be held accountable for their ads,” says Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a consumer organization that is trying to encourage candidates to disown “dark money.” “The outside groups are unknown, and have confusing names.”
No one is advertising under the moniker “Influence Peddlers for Crummy Politics.”
There is far too much complacency about big money’s role in this year’s campaigns, on the grounds that both sides have plenty of it. This misses the point. “It doesn’t balance it out if you have billionaire Republicans battling billionaire Democrats,” says Weissman. “You still have billionaires setting the agenda for the election.”
Moreover, a focus just on this year’s competitive Senate and House races misses the enormous impact a handful of very wealthy people can have on state and local campaigns. A new report by the Brennan Center for Justice details how, at a relatively modest cost to themselves, a privileged few can change how government that is supposed to be nearest to the people is actually carried out.
“At this scale, you don’t have to be a Koch brother to be a kingmaker,” the report informs us. Worse, the supposedly “independent” spending of the super-rich kingmakers isn’t independent at all. The report documents how closely the activities of supposedly outside groups are coordinated with insiders and the candidates themselves.
Like everything else in our politics these days, Citizens United is usually debated along ideological lines. Progressives typically hate it. Conservatives usually defend it. But citizens of every persuasion should be worried about what this precedent-shattering decision has unleashed. More than ever, politics is the only profession that regularly advertises against itself. If voters feel cynical, the outside groups — on both sides — are doing all they can to encourage their disenchantment.
A study by the Wesleyan Media Project of ads aired between Aug. 29 and Sept. 11 found that 55 percent of ads in U.S. Senate elections were negative, up from 43.7 percent over the same period in 2010. Wesleyan found that 91.4 percent of the ads run by outside groups in support of Democrats were negative, compared with 41.9 percent of those run by Democratic candidates themselves. For Republicans, 77.9 percent of the group ads were negative, compared with only 12.3 percent of the candidate ads. Negative ads were down slightly in the next two-week period, but there were still more negative commercials run this year than in the comparable period in 2010.
Defenders of massive spending on advertising, positive or negative, will make the case that at least the ads engage voters. Not necessarily, and certainly not this year. Indeed, the Pew Research Center found in early October that only 15 percent of Americans are following the elections “very closely.” Interest in the campaign, says Scott Keeter, director of survey research at Pew, “is the lowest it has been at this point in an off-year election in at least two decades.”
Hardly a day goes by without someone lamenting how polarized our politics has become. Can anyone seriously contend that the current way of running and financing elections is disconnected from the difficulty politicians have in working together? “How are they supposed to get along with the other side the day after the election?” Weissman asks. Writing recently in Foreign Affairs, the sometimes dissident conservative writer David Frum argues that “the radicalization of the party’s donor base has led Republicans in Congress to try tactics they would never have dared use before.”
Thus the tragic irony: Citizens United is deepening our divisions and turning more citizens into bystanders. Our republic can do better.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 12, 2014
“Misidentification Or Outright Lie?”: Oops; Republican Super PAC Misidentifies Source Of Massive Donation
Republican super PAC American Crossroads misidentified its second-largest donor last month in paperwork filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission.
The group, co-founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove, listed the Glenmede Trust Company as giving it $300,000 on Aug. 29, part of the $1.7 million American Crossroads raised in August.
But Glenmede spokeswoman Melissa Stonberg says the wealth management firm — which manages more than $25 billion for wealthy individuals, families and foundations — didn’t give American Crossroads a penny.
“The Glenmede Trust Company, N.A. did not make any donations to American Crossroads,” Stonberg told the Center for Public Integrity. “We have contacted American Crossroads to let them know of the misreporting.”
Paul Lindsay, the spokesman for American Crossroads, did not respond to questions about the apparent discrepancy Monday morning.
Several hours later, however, American Crossroads filed an amended report to the FEC that now identifies the $300,000 as coming from Thomas and Sandra Sullivan, the parents of U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan of Alaska. Lindsay confirmed the super PAC changed its report but declined additional comment.
A representative of RPM International, the family business where Thomas Sullivan currently serves as chairman emeritus of the board of directors, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Center for Public Integrity first raised questions about the six-figure super PAC contribution because the address American Crossroads listed for Glenmede seemed odd: It wasn’t the location of the company’s corporate headquarters in Philadelphia but that of a beachside condo in Florida.
Thomas Sullivan is the owner of the $3 million, 2,850-square-foot condo, according to Miami-Dade County records.
For their parts, Thomas and Sandra Sullivan have previously donated $250,000 to an Alaska-based super PAC known as “Alaska’s Energy/America’s Values,” which supports their son.
That super PAC has raised $460,000 through July 30, according to FEC records.
American Crossroads says it has spent more than $1.3 million in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race and reportedly plans to spend $5.5 million in the race.
Through mid-September, the group has already aired more than 1,600 TV ads in the race, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of data provided by Kantar Media/CMAG, an advertising tracking service.
In August, only one other donor gave more money to American Crossroads than the Sullivans — Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, who gave $500,000.
By: Michael Beckel, The Center for Public Integrity, September 22, 2014
“A Defeat For American Democracy”: The Senate Tried To Overturn ‘Citizens United’ Today. Guess What Stopped Them?
A majority of the United States Senate has voted to advance a constitutional amendment to restore the ability of Congress and the states to establish campaign fundraising and spending rules with an eye toward preventing billionaires and corporations from buying elections.
“Today was a historic day for campaign finance reform, with more than half of the Senate voting on a constitutional amendment to make it clear that the American people have the right to regulate campaign finance,” declared Senator Tom Udall, the New Mexico Democrat who in June proposed his amendment to address some of the worst results of the Supreme Court’s interventions in with the recent Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission decisions, as well as the 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that it’s going to take more than a majority to renew democracy.
Fifty-four senators, all Democrats and independents who caucus with the Democrats, voted Thursday for the amendment to clarify in the Constitution that Congress and the states have the authority to do what they did for a century before activist judges began intervening on behalf of wealthy donors and corporations: enact meaningful campaign finance rules and regulations.
But forty-two senators, all Republicans, voted no. As a result, Udall noted, the Republican minority was able to “filibuster this measure and instead choose to support a broken system that prioritizes corporations and billionaires over regular voters.”
The Republican opposition effectively blocked further consideration of the amendment proposal, since sixty votes were needed to end debate and force a vote. And, even if the Republicans had not filibustered the initiative, actual passage of an amendment would have required a two-thirds vote.
Though the Republican move was anticipated, Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who has been one of the Senate’s most ardent advocates for reform, expressed frustration with the result. “I am extremely disappointed that not one Republican voted today to stop billionaires from buying elections and undermining American democracy,” said the senator, who has advocated for a more sweeping amendment to address the influence and power of corporate cash on American elections and governance. “While the Senate vote was a victory for Republicans, it was a defeat for American democracy. The Koch brothers and other billionaires should not be allowed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars electing candidates who represent the wealthy and the powerful.“
Now, said Sanders, “the fight to overturn Citizens United must continue at the grassroots level in every state in this country.”
Sanders is right to reference the role of grassroots movements.
Four years ago, when the US Supreme Court removed barriers to corporate spending to buy elections, serious reformers said a constitutional amendment would be necessary to reverse the Court’s Citizens United ruling. Most pundits and politicians, even those who recognized the threat posed to democracy by the opening of the floodgates for big money, dismissed a constitutional fix as too bold and too difficult to achieve.
But the people embraced the constitutional route to reform. Grassroots organizing succeeded in getting sixteen states and close to 600 communities to formally demand that Congress act.
At the same time, the money poured in, with campaigning spending breaking records in the 2012 presidential and congressional elections—and heading toward breaking the record for midterm elections in 2014.
That was enough to shake up even the most cautious Senate Democrats, who began moving earlier this year to advance the Udall amendment. Though activists wanted a stronger amendment, the Senate deliberations confirmed that there is broad support for a constitutional response to the money-in-politics mess—and that a substantial number of senators now see that constitutional response as right and necessary.
“Less than five years after the Citizens United decision sparked national outrage, we have seen the movement to get big money out of politics go from local, grassroots organizing to a vote in the United States Senate,” explained People for the American Way Executive Vice President Marge Baker, who worked with activists from Public Citizen, Common Cause, Free Speech for People and other groups to collect and deliver 3.2 million signatures on petitions supporting an amendment. “Today’s historic majority vote is a remarkable milestone for this movement and a platform for taking the fight to the next level. The debate in the Senate this week is a debate that Americans across the country who are passionate about fixing our broken democracy have wanted to see.”
With the DC debate done, for now, the fight goes back to the grassroots. Activists with groups such as Move to Amend, Public Citizen’s “Democracy is for People” campaign and Free Speech for People will continue to organize and agitate, not just for an amendment but for an amendment that makes it absolutely clear that money is not speech, that corporations are not people and that citizens have a right to organize elections where votes matter more than dollars.
“We have amended the US Constitution before in our nation’s history. Twenty-seven times before. Seven of those times to overturn egregious Supreme Court rulings. For the promise of American democracy, we can and we will do it again,” declared John Bonifaz, the president of Free Speech for People, said Thursday. “The pressing question before the nation today is whether it is ‘we the people’ or ‘we the corporations and big money interests.’ This is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue. This is a deeply American issue. Whatever our political differences may be, we all share the common vision of government of, for, and by the people. Today’s US Senate vote is just the beginning. While this amendment bill did not receive this time the required two-thirds support in order to pass the Senate, we will be back again and again until we win. History is on our side.’
By: John Nichols, The Nation, September 12, 2014
“Donors Before Constituents”: The First Amendment, According To Mitch McConnell
Have you heard that Senate Democrats are working this week to repeal free speech?
I did, yesterday morning, from Mitch McConnell.
Have you heard that Democrats are going to go out and “muzzle” pastors who criticize them in the pulpit?
We did, from Ted Cruz.
Did you hear that Democrats are going to shut down conservative activists and then “brainwash the next generation into believing that this is how it should be”?
We did, last month, from the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins.
A good rule of thumb in politics is that the scarier someone sounds, the more you should doubt what they’re saying. Another good rule in politics is not to trust what Mitch McConnell says about money in politics.
Because, yes, that’s what we’re talking about here. Not a secret new Orwellian regime. Not a new anti-pastor task force. What we’re talking about is simply limiting the amount of money that corporations and wealthy individuals can spend to influence our elections.
This week, the Senate is debating a constitutional amendment that would overturn recent Supreme Court decisions that have paved the way for an explosion of big money in politics. In those decisions, including Citizens United and this year’s McCutcheon, the Supreme Court radically redefined the First Amendment to allow corporations and the wealthy to drown out the speech of everyday Americans with nearly unlimited political spending. The Democracy for All amendment would restore to Congress and the states the power to impose reasonable restrictions on money in politics, just as they had before the Supreme Court started to dismantle campaign finance laws.
So, what are Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz so scared of?
In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that Mitch McConnell supported the very laws that he is now dead-set on blocking. Back in 1987, McConnell said he would support a constitutional amendment to allow Congress to regulate independent expenditures in elections — just as the Democracy for All amendment would. And then he introduced that very constitutional amendment. Either McConnell has dramatically changed his mind regarding what constitutes a threat to the First Amendment, or he’s motivated by something more cynical.
So, if Mitch McConnell doesn’t actually think that limiting the amount of money that wealthy interests can spend on elections is a violation of the First Amendment, what is he up to? Could it be that he now finds it more useful to court the dollars of major donors than the votes of his constituents?
Washington is the only place where campaign finance reform is a partisan issue. A poll this summer found that 73 percent of voters support a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics. Americans know that our First Amendment is about protecting the speech of citizens, not the interests of wealthy campaign donors.
Faced with a large, bipartisan grassroots movement that threatens their big-spending friends, the only arguments that Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz have left are wild accusations, flat-out falsehoods, and outlandish interpretations of the Bill of Rights.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post Blog, September 9, 2014
“Mitch McConnell’s 47 Percent Moment”: There For Millionaires And Billionaires, They Know They Can Count On Mitch
A year ago, President Obama convulsed the White House Correspondents Dinner when he responded to complaints that he wasn’t meeting enough with the Republican leaders in the Congress: “Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?’ they ask. Really?” Obama asked the audience incredulously. “Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?”
The Kentucky senator, continuously partisan and mean spirited in public, earned the jab by leading a record number of filibusters as Senate minority leader during Obama’s tenure, forcing more than a quarter of all cloture votes in the history of the Senate since the beginning of the Republic.
Now, many political bookies, however prematurely, have made Republicans favorites to win the Senate majority. What will McConnell do if he must go from opposition to governing? Last week, the Nation Magazine, which I edit, along with Lauren Windsor of the Undercurrent, released an audiotape of McConnell’s revealing remarks to a private June strategy session of deep-pocket Republican billionaire donors, convened by the Koch brothers.
Introduced by the general counsel of Koch Industries, McConnell begins by paying tribute to his patrons, thanking the Koch brothers personally “for the important work you’re doing. I don’t know where we’d be without you . . . rallying, uh, to the cause.”
So what is the cause? Putting Americans to work? Rebuilding the middle class? Unleashing free market answers to catastrophic climate change?
No, McConnell can’t seem to get himself to address a positive agenda. He envisions only more obstruction. If he is majority leader, he promises, “we’re not going to be debating all these gosh darn proposals. That’s all we do in the Senate is vote on things like raising the minimum wage . . . extending unemployment . . . the student loan package the other day, that’s just going to make things worse.”
With Republican majorities, McConnell tells the fat cats, “We own the budget. So what does that mean? That means that we can pass the spending bill. And . . . we will be pushing back against this bureaucracy by doing what’s called placing riders in the bill. No money can be spent to do this or do that”
So what parts of government would McConnell starve of funds? Although many Republicans are campaigning as faux populists against crony capitalism, McConnell doesn’t suggest that he’ll cut subsidies to Big Oil or the lard-filled budgets of the Pentagon. No, McConnell pledges to his millionaire funders “We’re going to go after them on health care, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency, across the board [inaudible].”
For all his posturing about Obama’s dictatorial usurpations, McConnell reassures the millionaires that “we now have, I think, the most free and open system we’ve had in modern times.” Why? Because in the Citizens United decision, the conservatives on the Supreme Court overturned established precedents to give corporations the right to spend unlimited funds in elections. This is a victory for “open discourse,” McConnell argues, making clear just how he expects the corporations to make their opinions known:
“The Supreme Court allowed all of you to participate in the process in a variety of different ways. You can give to the candidate of your choice. You can give to Americans for Prosperity, or something else, a variety of different ways to push back against the party of government.” (Americans for Prosperity is the right-wing Koch funded political vehicle that has been called the “third-largest political party in the United States.”)
For McConnell, the court’s decision to unleash corporate contributions helped heal the pain from what he described as the “worst day of my political life.” Not the 9/11 terrorist bombings or the disastrous vote to invade Iraq. No, according to McConnell, the worst day of his political life was when a Republican congress passed and George W. Bush signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms, that put some limits of big money in our politics.
Mitch McConnell is surely a man for these times. Big money dominates our politics and corrupts our politicians (including, most recently, McConnell’s campaign manager, who resigned because of his possible involvement in bribing an Iowa state legislator to change his support from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul in the 2012 Iowa Republican presidential primary). Legislators like McConnell openly serve “the private sector,” currying their donations while serving their interests.
As Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said while campaigning for Alison Lundergan Grimes, McConnell’s underdog challenger: “Mitch McConnell is there for millionaires and billionaires. He is not there for people who are working hard playing by the rules and trying to build a future for themselves.”
Voters aren’t stupid. Given his views and his record, it is not surprising that McConnell is one of the most vulnerable of Republican incumbents, with Grimes running only a few points behind him. Nor is it surprising that more than $100 million may end up being spent on the race, making it one the most expensive contests in Senate history. Millionaires know they can count on McConnell.
McConnell ended his talk by repeating the Republican mantra against taxes and regulation, arguing, “If we want to get the country going again, we need to quit doing what we’ve been doing. Was it Einstein that [sic] said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result?” Let’s hope the voters of Kentucky come to the same conclusion about reelecting a senator who represents donors far better than voters.
By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 3, 2014
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