Litigation

?Hurricane? Swirls over Campaign Finance Rules

By Peter Hardin

The nation is witnessing extreme turbulence over campaign finance regulation, especially in the past week, but it could take more time to figure out with any certainty which way the winds will ultimately blow.

“What we’re seeing is a battle against all forms of campaign finance legislation,”  Tara Malloy, associate counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told the Washington Post. “We are really seeing a hurricane of sorts in the campaign finance world.”

This week  an appeals court threw out the “trigger provisions” in Connecticut’s public financing law for campaigns (see Gavel Grab), but a federal judge in Florida declined to block distribution of millions of dollars in “matching” public funds to a cash-strapped candidate for governor (read more in Gavel Grab).

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has been asked to consider the constitutionality of part of Arizona’s public financing law; the high court already has issued an emergency order blocking release of “matching” dollars to publicly funded candidates in that state (details in Gavel Grab), which some observers have seen as a signal of the Supreme Court’s leaning.

Critics of campaign finance regulations are heartened, according to the Post article. “I think there’s a growing sense that these so-called reforms really haven’t accomplished that much and there are core First Amendment issues that need to be dealt with,” said Bradley A. Smith, who heads the Center for Competitive Politics. “I do think we’ve gone over to the offense, and I feel good about that.”

Some supporters of campaign finance regulations pointed out that the appeals court preserved some key parts of Connecticut’s law.  “I think what’s encouraging is the 2nd Circuit [Court of Appeals] said loud and clear that the constitutionality of public financing systems in general is not in doubt,” said Monica Youn of the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Brennan Center and the Campaign Legal Center are partners of the Justice at Stake Campaign.

Public financing of campaigns helps remove the corrupting influence of money in them, advocates for the plan say. To learn about public financing of judicial elections, see Justice at Stake?s issues page on the topic.

Full post as published by The Gavel on July 16, 2010 (boomark / email).