Campaign finance : what everyone needs to know PDF
Preview Campaign finance : what everyone needs to know
i CAMPAIGN FINANCE WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW® ii iii CAMPAIGN FINANCE WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW® ROBERT E. MUTCH 1 iv 3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. “What Everyone Needs to Know” is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available at the Library of Congress. ISBN 978– 0– 19– 027469– 6 (hbk.); 978– 0– 19– 027468– 9 (pbk.) 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by R.R. Donnelley, United States of America v CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii INTRODUCTION xv 1 What is the campaign finance problem? 1 What is the disagreement between supporters and opponents of reform? 1 How big a problem is quid pro quo corruption? 2 Whether the problem is political corruption or political inequality, campaign finance is about paying for election campaigns. How much do they cost? 3 Do elections cost a lot more now than they used to? 4 Is it true that the candidate with the most money always wins? 5 Where do candidates get the money to pay for their campaigns? 5 What is the role of political parties? 6 How has Congress regulated money in elections? 7 What is the state of the Federal Election Campaign Act today? 8 2 Watergate and Buckley v. Valeo 10 What was Watergate? 10 What was the campaign finance part of Watergate? 13 How did Congress change campaign finance law after Watergate? 15 Who were Buckley and Valeo? 16 vi vi Contents Why did Senator Buckley and the other challengers think the 1974 reforms were unconstitutional? 17 How did the circuit court decide Buckley v. Valeo? 18 How did the Supreme Court decide Buckley v. Valeo? 19 How did the challengers, the defenders, and the justices deal with the reform goals of curbing campaign costs, preventing corruption, and promoting equality? 21 Why is Buckley v. Valeo still important today? 22 3 The rise and fall of public funding 25 How does the Presidential Election Campaign Fund work? 25 Did Congress come up with the idea of public funding in response to Watergate? 26 What did reformers hope to accomplish by using public funds to pay for elections? 27 Why was Senator Long’s public funding bill so controversial? 28 If the income tax checkoff was so controversial in the 1960s, how did it survive the political battles in Congress? 29 What happened to the tax incentives for small contributions that Congress passed in 1971? 30 Why did the public funding program pay for the party conventions as well as the elections? 30 Why did Congress repeal public funding for party conventions? 32 How does the public funding program treat minor parties? 33 How does the public funding program treat independents? 33 Did public funding meet its goal of bringing in new, small donors? 35 Public funding is also supposed to bring in new candidates. Did the presidential program do that? 36 But participation in the tax checkoff had dropped by 2012. Did the same thing happen with public opinion? 37 What kinds of public funding programs are the states enacting? 38 Which states subsidize election campaigns? 39 vii Contents vii Which cities have public funding programs? 41 How does New York City’s public funding program work? 42 How well did the presidential public funding program work? 43 4 Disclosure and the Federal Election Commission 46 What does the FEC do? 47 Why did Congress create the Federal Election Commission? 48 How does the FEC work? Is it like other independent agencies? 49 How well does the current disclosure law work? 51 How does the FEC enforce other parts of the FECA? 54 Why are there so many partisan deadlocks on the FEC? 56 Why has disclosure become so controversial? 57 What are the intimidation charges raised by opponents of disclosure? 59 5 Political action committees 61 Why do we have PACs? Who created them and why? 61 Why did corporations suddenly begin forming PACs in the late 1970s? 63 Why did reformers try to curb PACs in the 1980s? 64 Did politicians begin refusing PAC contributions in the 1980s? 66 Were independent expenditures new? 67 What is a connected PAC? 68 How do the five categories of connected PACs differ from one another? 69 Do business and labor PACs do different things with their money in elections? 70 What are nonconnected PACs? 71 What do ideological PACs do? 71 What do leadership PACs do? 72 viii viii Contents 6 Super PACs 75 Where did the super PAC come from? 75 What makes super PACs super? 76 What is a hybrid PAC? 77 Why is coordination between candidates and super PACs a problem? 78 What did Congress do about independent expenditures after Watergate? 79 How did Citizens United and SpeechNow make coordination between candidates and super PACs such a big problem? 80 What are the rules against candidates coordinating with super PACs? 82 How close did candidates and super PACs get in 2012? 83 How did the super PAC change the way presidential candidates run their campaigns? 84 Stephen Colbert formed a super PAC on his Comedy Central TV show, The Colbert Report. What was that about? 85 Jeb Bush’s super PAC did not help him at all. And Hillary Clinton’s super PAC did not help her fend off Bernie Sanders. So how big a deal are super PACs, really? 87 7 Billionaires 89 There seem to be a lot of billionaire donors these days. Is this new? 89 What is different about megadonors today? 90 How did fundraising by presidential candidates in 2015 differ from that of previous elections? 91 Jeb Bush was the establishment candidate who raised the most money from billionaires, but his campaign never got off the ground. So were the billionaires really all that important? 93 Were billionaires any more important in the Democrats’ race? 94 What is the Koch brothers’ network? 95 What did the Koch network do in the 2012 and 2014 elections? 97 How are other conservative billionaires becoming active in elections? 98 ix Contents ix Are liberal billionaires doing anything similar to what the Koch brothers are doing? 99 Are individual liberal billionaires building personal political operations, as rich conservatives are doing? 101 8 Outside money 103 What was soft money? 103 Did both parties raise soft money? 105 How did the nature of soft money change after 1992? 106 What was the McCain- Feingold Act? 108 What is a 527? 109 Did 527s just replace party soft money? 110 What are 501(c) tax-e xempt groups? 112 What was Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC? 113 Was there still a lot of outside money in the 2008 election? 114 How did the FEC weaken disclosure rules for tax- exempt groups? 114 What are 501(c)(4)s? 115 How did Citizens United change the role of 501(c)s in elections? 116 What was the controversy over the IRS’s scrutiny of applications to form social welfare groups? 117 What did the American Bar Association recommend the IRS do about political activity by nonpolitical groups? 118 9 Corporations, Unions, and Citizens United 121 What can corporations do in elections now that they could not do before Citizens United? 121 Did Citizens United overturn the Tillman Act’s ban on political contributions? 122 Did the Tillman Act work? Or did corporations keep making campaign contributions after it banned them? 123
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