Forum becomes campaign cash free-for-all
The nation’s top election regulator advertised today’s rare, daylong public hearing as an opportunity to address a recent Supreme Court ruling that allowed people to contribute money to an unlimited number of federal politicians.
Instead, liberals and conservatives used the Federal Election Commission’s forum to argue for their pet political money agendas while routinely, if politely, talking past one another.
Big money has become “a source of cynicism for our elections," argued Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch project, who joined a host of other liberals and reformists in demanding that politically active groups be required to disclose their funders.
“We don't need less money in the political process, we need more,” said lawyer Dan Backer, who successfully represented plaintiff Shaun McCutcheon in the McCutcheon v. FEC case that was supposed to be the subject of today’s meeting.
Other conservatives and advocates of a laissez-faire campaign finance system expressed fear that the FEC’s three Democratic appointees will try to regulate political speech on the Internet and reveal the identities of donors to politically active nonprofit groups.
The forum, which began at 8:15 a.m. and lasted well into the afternoon, laid bare the vast divide in the public and on the commission between those who want more transparency and controls on political spending and those who believe spending money on behalf of political candidates is sacred free speech.
The absence of intense debate about the McCutcheon decision appeared to annoy Republican National Committee Chief Counsel John Phillippe Jr., who had been called to testify on the topic. Channeling 1992 Reform Party vice presidential candidate James Stockdale, he mused, "Who am I, and why are we here?"
FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel, a Democrat, reveled in the hearing, which she called “historic.”
There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.
This story is part of Primary Source. Primary Source keeps you up-to-date on developments in the post-Citizens United world of money in politics. Click here to read more stories in this blog.
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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
