Litigation

Bopp Profile: ?Man Behind our Secret Elections?

By Peter Hardin

James Bopp Jr.  is not widely known, yet he wields tremendous influence as “The Man Behind our Secret Elections,”  a new report by Common Cause and Public Campaign suggests.

Bopp “is one of the powerful and influential leaders of corporate America’s efforts to dismantle the post-Watergate campaign finance system,” begins the report about the Indiana-based litigator for deep-pocketed conservative interests.

He is familiar to readers of Gavel Grab, which has tracked his efforts to dismantle campaign finance laws at both the state and federal level; he originally launched the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case that resulted in a landmark Supreme Court decision.

Litigator Bopp “has engineered the flow of tens of millions of dollars in corporate and trade association money — most of it from secret donors — into this year’s mid-term elections,” Common Cause adds in introducing the report.

“James Bopp is the point man for conservative wealthy interests whose goal is to dismantle the laws and regulations we have in place to stop the buying of Congress and other elected officials,” Common Cause President Bob Edgar said in a press release.

Both Common Cause and Public Campaign are partners of Justice at Stake. Their report concludes that Bopp’s objective is “to help elect extremist Republicans” through dismantling existing law and “opening the door to unlimited, anonymous corporate fundraising.”

You can learn more about Bopp and about varying responses to the Citizens United decision in a lengthy ABA Journal article entitled, “A Cautionary Tale of Corporate Political Spending Emerges in Minnesota.” And McClatchy Newspapers discusses the report in an article, “Meet the lawyer who argued money is speech, and won.”

Full post as published by The Gavel on October 25, 2010 (boomark / email).