Money v. Moderation

A number of posts have discussed compromise and polarization.

John Farmer, Jr. at The Messenger:

The development of social media platforms has put the Citizens United principle on steroids. Such platforms became profitable only when they began to deploy algorithms that use commercial advertising principles to amplify every consumer preference. By applying those algorithms to political speech, they embody the deformities of political dialogue that the Citizens United principle made certain.

But here’s the rub: Once you have generated money by appealing primarily to the most motivated supporters of a cause, and recruited others by demonizing the other side of an issue, how do you then explain to them the need to walk it all back, to compromise? Compromise, after all, is ideologically impure. It is messy and unprincipled. It is also, under our Constitution, essential.

In its own way, compromise points to higher virtue than ideology can reach: humility, the recognition that no set of beliefs has a monopoly on truth, and that no matter how fervently we may believe something, we just might be wrong.

The intellectual humility that underlies our form of government is hard to find in the commercial marketplace, so it’s not surprising that it has been banished from our post-Citizens United politics. Accepting that the Supreme Court is unlikely in the near term to moderate its course and embrace some limitations on the role of money in politics, the issue of our time is whether you can sell compromise.

Is there a market for moderation? The answer to that question may hold the key to the continued viability of our republic.

Shady Fundraising

Many posts have discussed campaign finance.

David A. Fahrenthold and Tiff Fehr at NYT:

A group of conservative operatives using sophisticated robocalls raised millions of dollars from donors using pro-police and pro-veteran messages. But instead of using the money to promote issues and candidates, an analysis by The New York Times shows, nearly all the money went to pay the firms making the calls and the operatives themselves, highlighting a flaw in the regulation of political nonprofits.

...

In theory, it is a political nonprofit called a 527, after a section of the tax code, that can raise unlimited donations to help or oppose candidates, promote issues or encourage voting.

In reality, it is part of a group of five linked nonprofits that have exploited thousands of donors in ways that have been hidden until now by a blizzard of filings, lax oversight and a blind spot in the campaign finance system.

Since 2014, the five groups have pulled in $89 million from small-dollar donors who were pitched on building political support for police officers, veterans and firefighters.

But just 1 percent of the money they raised was used to help candidates via donations, ads or targeted get-out-the-vote messages, according to an analysis by The Times of the groups’ public filings.

...

The campaign-finance system is built to police who puts money into politics, legal experts say. These groups embodied a flaw: The system is poorly prepared to stop those who raise money and channel it somewhere other than candidates and causes.

By minimizing their aid to candidates, the consultants who helped set up the five nonprofits avoided scrutiny from the Federal Election Commission and most state watchdogs, and put their groups under the jurisdiction of a distracted and underfunded regulator, the Internal Revenue Service. As a result, their spending records were posted not on the F.E.C.’s easily searchable site, but on a byzantine I.R.S. page written in bureaucratic jargon. 

...

“Constructing an elaborate self-licking ice cream cone, or fund-raising cycle that feeds itself, that’s not an exempt purpose,” said Matthew Sanderson, a lawyer at the firm Caplin & Drysdale who has advised Republican campaigns, using the I.R.S.’s term for an allowable use of the groups’ money. “The fund-raising has to be for something.”

...

The organizations’ calls were recorded by Nomorobo, a company that collects robocalls so it can help customers block them. The company’s founder, Aaron Foss, said it had recorded tens of thousands of calls from just these four groups — putting them among the most prolific and longest-running robocallers his network has ever tracked.

The calls captured by Nomorobo were made using a powerful new technology, a “soundboard,” according to a spokesman for the groups’ largest vendor for fund-raising calls, New Jersey-based Residential Programs, Inc.

A soundboard is a computer program, preloaded with snippets of recorded dialogue, down to uh-huhs, thank-yous and mother-in-law jokes. By clicking buttons, an operator anywhere in the world can “speak” to donors in colloquial English without saying a word.

“One, it keeps everybody on script. Two, you don’t hear the foreign accent. And three, you don’t hear the call center noise,” Mr. Foss said.

“If you say, ‘Are you a robot?’,” Mr. Foss said, “there’s a button that says, ‘No.’”

Open Society Policy Center

Brian Schwartz at CNBC:

A nonprofit financed by billionaire George Soros quietly donated $140 million to advocacy organizations and ballot initiatives in 2021, plus another $60 million to like-minded charities.

Soros, who personally donated $170 million during the 2022 midterms to Democratic candidates and campaigns on top of that, spread the additional largess through the Open Society Policy Center — a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that falls under the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations network, according to a copy of its 2021 tax filing, which was obtained by CNBC and is the most recent data available. The Open Society Policy Center also doled out $138 million to advocacy groups and causes in 2020. Two of Soros’ children sit on its board, the tax filings and its website show.

The donations bring Soros’ contributions to political campaigns and causes since January 2020 to roughly half a billion dollars — at the least — most of it steered through dark money nonprofit groups and going largely toward political causes aligned with the Democratic Party.

Soros’ nonprofit donations don’t always go directly to political causes. The funds sometimes flow from one of his nonprofits, then to another, before being spent on the advertising, organizing and social media campaigns that directly reach voters.

Many of the Open Society Policy Center’s 2021 donations weren’t necessarily earmarked to help sway the midterm elections, according to the foundation’s website. At the same time, Tom Watson, an editorial director at the Open Society Foundations, conceded in an email to CNBC that “there are definitely some OSPC grants that went to organizations working to combat voter suppression, support voter registration and expand civic participation.” Those are all core Democratic principles.

Campaign Finance in the 2022 Midterm

 Open Secrets:

The total cost of 2022 midterm elections is projected to exceed $9.3 billion, according to an early, conservative estimate by OpenSecrets. More than $4.8 billion has already been spent on 2022 midterms, setting federal election spending on track to surpass the inflation-adjusted 2018 midterm record of $7.1 billion.

“We’re seeing much more money, more candidates and more political division than we did in 2018,” said OpenSecrets Executive Director Sheila Krumholz. “Spending is surging across the board this midterm cycle, fueling a polarization vortex that shows no signs of slowing.”

That $4.8 billion figure includes spending disclosed to the Federal Election Commission by candidates, political parties, political action committees and other groups during the 2022 midterm election cycle as of Sept. 20, 2022. Total spending will likely jump in mid-October, as most third-quarter filings are not due to the FEC until Oct. 15, the first disclosure deadline for most federal candidates since mid-year disclosures were filed.

While OpenSecrets’ $9.3 billion estimate is slightly less than the $9.9 billion – adjusted for inflation – spent on U.S. congressional races in the 2020 election cycle, 2022 election spending is on pace to exceed the $8 billion in inflation-adjusted spending on congressional and presidential races during the 2016 election cycle.

Madison and Campaign Finance Reform

Michael J. Malbin * | 23.5 | Article | Citation: Michael J. Malbin, A Neo-Madisonian Perspective on Campaign Finance Reform, Institutions, Pluralism, and Small Donors, 23 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 907 (2021).

Recent events remind us of the importance and fragility of the institutions that undergird a healthy democracy. This article steps away from the speech-and-corruption debates dominating campaign finance since Buckley v. Valeo to suggest an approach it calls “neo-Madisonian.” It begins with the Federalists’ views about fostering a multi-factional and deliberative Congress but tempers their vision with departures relating to parties and pluralism. The article agrees with scholars who see parties as important but disagrees with shaping campaign finance to enhance national party leaders. The time members spend raising funds instead of legislating, the use of member “dues” to select committees, and repeated “message voting,” are symptoms of a larger party-related disease that feeds polarization and hinders Congress’s ability to perform its needed role.

With respect to pluralism, the article argues that Madison’s large-republic framework has clear advantages but leaves too many outside. Accepting the advantages of size should carry with it a duty to address this shortcoming. Small-donor public financing is often proposed as a remedy. The article refutes claims that link small donors to extremism. Nevertheless, the article does point out important risks. To address the risks, it puts forward empirical analysis to support a new approach adopted in New York State that will target generous public financing to empower within-district small donors.

The article thus casts a metaphorical net in two directions—urging reformers to take institutions seriously, while urging institutionalists to reach out to those left aside. These goals are not contradictory. Public resources can help correct pluralism’s flaws, but the correction should simultaneously serve institutional goals for the common good.

Normals

 Axios Finish Line:

Three stats we find reassuring:

1. 75% of people in the U.S. never tweet.
2. On an average weeknight in January, just 1% of U.S. adults watched primetime Fox News (2.2 million). 0.5% tuned into MSNBC (1.15 million).
3. Nearly three times more Americans (56%) donated to charities during the pandemic than typically give money to politicians and parties (21%).

The bottom line: Every current trend suggests politics will get more toxic before it normalizes. But the silent majority gives us hope beyond the nuttiness.

Dark Money, Philanthropy, and Cynicism

Many posts have discussed the political uses of philanthropy. 

Theodore Schleifer at Puck:

Neither party will admit it, but the line between philanthropy and politics has, frankly, been completely obliterated over the last few years. What counts as “philanthropy” versus “politics” depends on your political tribe: I can tell you that the Koch network views their campaigns to deregulate the economy as philanthropy that helps the poor, although liberals won’t believe it. Similarly, conservatives won’t believe that registering likely Democratic voters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona is “philanthropy.” Many liberals see that as plainly pro-democracy, and given the racial inequities in voter turnout, as anti-racist. Conservatives see these well-tailored charitable gifts—such as the half-a-billion dollars that Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan donated for elections administration last year—as driven by a sinister agenda, or at least as a bank-shot progressive power play. You’d have an equally difficult time convincing Democrats that the Kochs’ lobbying against the E.P.A. is done for the benefit of the rural poor.

If there was a silver lining to Citizens United, it’s that most insiders now will admit, in candid moments, they’re in on the joke. Cynicism abounds. Technically, there should be an easy way to distinguish between philanthropy and politics: According to the tax code, a donation to a 501(c)3 organization is tax-deductible because it is philanthropy, while a donation to a 501(c)4 group, a super PAC or a campaign is not tax-deductible because it counts as politics. And technically, there should be a way to distinguish between policy advocacy—the purpose of dark-money 501(c)4 organizations—and explicit elect-him or oust-her electioneering, which is the provenance of super PACs and campaigns. But the territory has become decidedly murky, as the new filings from outside groups reveal....

None of these tactics are illegal. But one consequence of the aforementioned loopholes and exploits is that ever more of the money that shapes civic life is retreating into the shadows. This trend began in philanthropy over the last decade, as billionaires moved their charitable work from tax-filing foundations into donor-advised funds and LLCs that don’t share anything with the I.R.S. And now what has eaten philanthropy has eaten campaign finance, too. The upshot is that the public disclosures that are filed with the government have never meant less. Reading the tax documents that private foundations must file, or the F.E.C. reports that campaigns and super PACs must declare, reveals an awfully incomplete snapshot of big-money philanthropy and big-money politics. The real innovation, and the real money, increasingly flows in the unaccountable backwaters of America’s political swamp.

Foreign Influence in the 2020 Election

Anna Massoglia at Open Secrets:

More than $33.5 million in individual political contributions came from foreign agents and lobbyists during the 2020 election, a new OpenSecrets analysis found.

Foreign nationals are prohibited by federal law from making contributions to political groups or campaigns to influence U.S. elections. But foreign nationals can hire foreign agents or lobbyists to advocate for their interests in the U.S. and lobbyists who are U.S. citizens are able to make political contributions, even to the same lawmakers they may be lobbying on behalf of foreign clients.

Foreign agents registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act during the 2020 election cycle made at least $8.5 million in political contributions. Another $25 million in 2020 political contributions came from lobbyists representing foreign clients, including U.S. subsidiaries owned or controlled by foreign parent companies, registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

That includes all of foreign agents’ 2020 individual contributions to federal-level campaigns as well as outside groups like political action committees and super PACs that are registered with the FEC. PACs affiliated with firms of registered foreign agents contributed even more.

The Politics of Place

Federalist 57: "THE THIRD charge against the House of Representatives is, that it will be taken from that class of citizens which will have least sympathy with the mass of the people, and be most likely to aim at an ambitious sacrifice of the many to the aggrandizement of the few."

David Fontana at WP Magazine:

[Place] still matters a lot — more than you might think — in defining who many Americans are. In the average county weighted by population, according to a study from the Journal of Economic Perspectives, 55 percent of Facebook friends live within 50 miles of one another, even though only 1 percent of people live within 50 miles of one another. Childhood is defined by being in the places that your family chooses for you, and after high school you can finally pick your own place to live — yet one analysis found that college students on average move less than 15 miles from their childhood home. Another study found that the median distance that adults live from their mother is 18 miles.

...

Since places are their own communities with their own self-reinforcing worldviews, it stands to reason that, in our democracy, the people who represent those places should genuinely understand them. A democracy that allocates power by place is, or is supposed to be, an intimate democracy. Not all democracies are set up this way — countries like Israel and the Netherlands allocate power through national systems of proportional representation — but in the United States, our political leaders are meant to govern people with whom they share a lived experience anchored in a place.

...

Most Americans still realize how much their place shapes their lives and choices. However, for the most privileged Americans, the power of place, while very real, has become harder to see — because their places change more significantly and more frequently.

Those with professional or graduate degrees are nearly three times as likely as those without a high school degree to move across state lines in a given year, according to the American Community Survey and demographer Lyman Stone. These numbers are even more dramatic among the highest-status educational institutions: As of 2015, 85 percent of Harvard first-year students moved from outside Massachusetts. And those Americans more willing and able to move toward opportunity tend to concentrate in the most privileged neighborhoods in the most privileged metropolitan areas. In 2019, 9 percent of Washington’s population moved from outside D.C. The comparison here is admittedly imperfect, but in the congressional district where I’m from in the North Country, 3 percent of the population moved in from a different state or country.

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One study in the journal Political Behavior found that in the 2005-06 congressional election cycle, about 5 percent of America’s Zip codes — concentrated in a few neighborhoods in a few metropolitan areas — were responsible for 77 percent of all individual contributions to congressional campaigns. And Anne Baker at Santa Clara University found that, from 2006 to 2012, the “average member of the House received just 11 percent of all campaign funds from donors inside the district.” The trend in this direction has been dramatic. In 1990, according to a study in Political Research Quarterly, out-of-district donors accounted for 42 percent of individual contributions to the median incumbent in the U.S. House. By 2010, that number was 72 percent. And candidates from both parties have a similar geographic distribution in their fundraising: Republicans also raise lots of money from New York City, and Democrats also raise lots of money from Houston.

...

There is an entire infrastructure that reflects — and then reinforces — the sense that place matters much less than it really does. Polling firms that produce results dominating our political system ask questions that matter enormously everywhere rather than those that only matter somewhere. They ask how people compare Joe Biden to Donald Trump, or what they want done about immigration, rather than what should be done about a locally significant employer that is departing.

Political elites campaigning for office internalize this lesson over their careers and speak the language of a post-place politics. They talk about red or blue and Trump or Biden. For their part, political editors at major outlets send reporters from far away to cover wide swaths of the country because they do not have reporters living there — and those reporters are more likely to cover these places through a national lens.

Drug Money and State Legislators

 Lev Facher at STAT:

In the last two years, at least 2,467 state legislators — over one-third of all state lawmakers nationwide — used pharmaceutical industry cash to fund their campaigns, according to a new STAT analysis of campaign finance records that spans the full 2020 election cycle. The industry wrote over 10,000 individual checks totaling more than $9 million.

STAT’s findings provide an unprecedented look at drug industry influence in state capitols across the 2020 election cycle. The dataset includes the largest 23 U.S. drug manufacturers by revenue plus the trade groups PhRMA and BIO. It builds upon a previous analysis that STAT published prior to the election, and now includes complete data from nearly every state, including all contributions made through Dec. 31, 2020.

Women Candidates in 2020

 Stacy Montemayor and Pete Quist, National Institute on Money in Politics; Karl Evers-Hillstrom and Grace Haley, Center for Responsive Politics, | 2020-12-21

Key findings:

• Between 2016 and 2020, the percentage of women candidates in gubernatorial and state legislative races saw a massive jump, from 25 percent to 32 percent.
• At least 142 women will hold seats in the next Congress, an all-time high mark.
• In 2020 races for the U.S. House and Senate, women candidates outraised men on average, while also nearly closing the gap in state-level contests.
• In 2020 races, women accounted for 33 percent of donations to congressional candidates and 31 percent of donations to state-level candidates, both record marks.

...

Republican women also made gains in state races, though they were less pronounced. Women made up nearly 23 percent of 2020 Republican candidates, up from 18 percent in 2016. The biggest jump came from non-incumbent Republicans. In 2016, nearly 19 percent of Republican challengers were women. That figure jumped to 27 percent in this year’s elections.

Figure 2: Women candidates in 2020 state races, by party

Women candidates generally won at the same rate at which they ran at the state level. In 2020, 32 percent of all candidates for state legislative and gubernatorial seats were women, and 32 percent of the general election winners were women. In the 2016 and 2012 election cycles, women only accounted for 26 percent of general election winners.

Gender parity at the state level is still a ways off despite modest gains. Nevada remains the only state in the nation with a majority-female legislature. The vast majority of leadership positions in state legislatures are held by men. Just seven women serve as speakers of state houses, and nine women currently serve as governors.

Drug Money

  Lev Facher at STAT:

Well over one-quarter of all state lawmakers nationwide have accepted money from the pharmaceutical industry since the beginning of 2019, according to a new STAT examination.

In several states, taking drug industry cash was more the norm than the exception: In Illinois, more than 79% of the state’s 177 elected lawmakers have cashed such a check. In California, over 85% of lawmakers have taken pharma money. The data reveals the drug industry has poured over $5 million into state legislators’ campaigns in the past two years alone.

STAT’s analysis, conducted in partnership with the National Institute on Money in Politics, provides a first-of-its-kind study of the drug industry’s influence in state capitols. It follows a companion analysis of drug industry spending at the federal level, which revealed $11 million in industry giving as of July.

Drug Company Contributions 2020

Lev Facher at STAT:

The world’s biggest drug makers and their trade groups have cut checks to 356 lawmakers ahead of this year’s election — more than two-thirds of the sitting members of Congress, according to a new STAT analysis.

It’s a barrage of contributions that accounts for roughly $11 million in campaign giving, distributed via roughly 4,500 checks from the political action committees affiliated with the companies.

The spending follows a long tradition of generous political giving. Major manufacturers typically make hundreds of modest donations to incumbent members of Congress but avoid donating to presidential candidates, seeing little utility in placing presidential bets.

As the Covid-19 pandemic has sparked a race among drug makers eager to develop a vaccine and improve the industry’s standing in Washington — pharma’s giving underscores the breadth of its influence and its efforts to curry favor through lobbying and donations to the lawmakers who regulate health care.

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“It’s less about a particular deliverable and more about creating a relationship,” said Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a money-in-politics group that STAT contracted with to supply contribution records. “And, maybe, greasing the skids on a particular issue for which a company has great concern or sees great opportunity. On Covid, it’s certainly both — these corporations are being called to the aid of a country in crisis.”

Police Unions

 Noam Scheiber, Farah Stockman and J. David Goodman at NYT:

Over the past five years, as demands for reform have mounted in the aftermath of police violence in cities like Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and now Minneapolis, police unions have emerged as one of the most significant roadblocks to change. The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition.

They aggressively protect the rights of members accused of misconduct, often in arbitration hearings that they have battled to keep behind closed doors. And they have also been remarkably effective at fending off broader change, using their political clout and influence to derail efforts to increase accountability.

While rates of union membership have dropped by half nationally since the early 1980s, to 10 percent, higher membership rates among police unions give them resources they can spend on campaigns and litigation to block reform. A single New York City police union has spent more than $1 million on state and local races since 2014.
...
It remains to be seen how the unions will respond to reform initiatives by cities and states since Mr. Floyd’s death, including a new ban on chokeholds in Minneapolis. But in recent days, unions have continued to show solidarity with officers accused of abusive behavior.

The president of a police union in Buffalo said the union stood “100 percent” behind two officers who were suspended on Thursday after appearing to push an older man who fell and suffered head injuries. The union president said the officers “were simply following orders.”

All 57 officers on the Emergency Response Team, a special squad formed to respond to riots, had resigned from their posts on the team in support of the suspended officers, according to The Buffalo News.

Open Secrets:

Since the 1994 election cycle, 55 police union and law enforcement PACs have donated over $1.1 million to congressional campaigns, more than a third of which has gone to current members of congress. Funds spread to both sides of the aisle, especially to those in prominent positions and with influence in the House Law Enforcement Caucus. Another $9 million in itemized contributions come from those listing current or retired law enforcement positions as their profession since 1990.

Tracking Political Money

Many posts have discussed campaign finance, state legislatures, and congressional elections.

From the National Institute on Money in Politics:

It's March, and Congress and many state legislatures are busy! If you are a reporter covering proposed bills, be sure to remember this arrow in your quiver: the National Institute on Money in Politics identifies the members of legislative committees in the states and in Congress, compiles data about who contributed to those committee members' election campaigns, and makes tools available to inform your work as you decipher it all. Institute researchers have nearly completed the 2020 legislative committee membership lists; you can access this essential information in three ways, all for free at: www.FollowTheMoney.org.

My Legislature allows you to identify who has contributed to the committee members considering legislation you care about, in addition to seeing who has given to sponsors of any piece of legislation. This enables you to analyze how political contributions correlate with actions by bill sponsors, legislators, and committees. My Legislature also contains information about what actions have been taken on each bill. Simply select for congressional delegates or select your state from the drop-down menu at My Legislature and use the tabs in the upper left to navigate your own very specific search.

Power Mapping for states or for Congress empowers analysis of how members of a legislative chamber or a committee may be inclined to vote on specific legislation or general issues based on their campaign donor pools. If you are an advocate, this tool can be extraordinarily useful for identifying legislators who may be open to persuasion either for or against your issue based on patterns in their fundraising. Journalists may find interesting stories here, as well, particularly in cases of legislators who have donor pools that are dominated by interests pushing a specific agenda. The Power Mapping page includes links in the lower right that describe the tool functionality and provide a video tutorial.

Finally, the Institute's powerful Ask Anything search function serves fully tailored searches. For example, with only a few clicks it is possible to see the largest donors to members of the New York State Senate Housing, Construction, and Community Development Committee or the largest donors to members of the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee.

With the Institute's freshly updated legislative committee membership lists and comprehensive campaign finance data, the possibilities are truly endless.
As always, do call us with any questions. We actually answer the phone: 406-449-2480.

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The nonprofit, nonpartisan National Institute on Money in Politics collects and analyzes campaign contribution information on state and federal candidates, political party committees, and ballot committees. Its free, searchable database of contributions is online at FollowTheMoney.org

Research, Fall 2019

Watch this clip from The Wire.  It is the best description of research, ever.

The Internet Archive -- if there is a broken link to what you need, this site might help you find it.  (A morbid example here: http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/04/05/uk.pitneydeath/index.html)

Great stuff at Honnold Library -- which students usually overlook! (password required)

• Nexis Uni:  news sources and law journals
• Political science journals
• Dissertation abstracts (search for "California" and "redistricting" in abstracts, and you will see a couple of Rose Institute names)

General Statistics and The Census

California and General State Politics

• Public Policy Institute of California -- California surveys and policy analysis
• California bills and laws 
• LAO -- Legislative Analyst's Office -- analysis of CA issues
• NCSL -- National Conference of State Legislatures -- analysis and data on state issues
• Open States -- bill information for all state legislatures

Elections, Parties, Campaign Finance

• Open Secrets -- Center for Responsive Politics site for federal campaign finance information
• FEC -- Federal Election Commission
• FCC Public Inspection Files (ad buys on broadcast stations)
• US Presidential Election Atlas -- just what the title says, great historical data
• Precinct Map of the 2016 Election -- every precinct in the country
• US Elections Project -- turnout data
• California Elections Data Archive -- local elections in CA
• Join California  -- elections in CA
• California ballot measures -- archive going back to 1911

Public Opinion

• Polling Report -- aggregation of national poll data
• Gallup -- the best-known US pollster, delivering new numbers daily 
• 2016 exit poll
• 2018 exit poll

FEC Troubles

Dave Levinthal at the Center for Public Integrity reports on the Federal Election Commission.  An internal turf war has led to a vacancy in its office of inspector general.

The May 2018 fracas, described in interviews and a series of internal emails obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, is but one of several stumbles that have helped render the FEC’s inspector general office effectively nonfunctional since November, when the lone deputy inspector general quit.

This matters because the inspector general office investigates waste, fraud and abuse at the FEC, including accusations against commissioners. The bipartisan FEC is itself responsible for enforcing and regulating national campaign finance laws but has long been hamstrung by ideological divisions, low staff morale and other long-standing vacancies, including two of six FEC commissioner slots.

So the lack of an inspector general means no one is watching the election watchdog — at a time when few feel the FEC is functioning effectively, even as its missions are evermore important. The FEC’s struggles are set against the backdrop of an accelerating chase for presidential campaign cash and prominent political money scandals — alleged porn actress hush-money payments and foreign infiltration among them.

Scammers are also increasingly preying on vulnerable Americans who are misled into believing they are supporting a candidate or cause — an issue the FEC has struggled to address.

The Politics of CEOs

Cohen, Alma and Hazan, Moshe and Tallarita, Roberto and Weiss, David, The Politics of CEOs (March 19, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3355690

Abstract:

CEOs of public companies have influence over the political spending of their firms, which has been attracting significant attention since the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. Furthermore, the policy views expressed by CEOs receive substantial consideration from policymakers and the public. Therefore, we argue, the political preferences of CEOs are important for a full understanding of U.S. policy making and politics. To contribute to this understanding, we provide novel empirical evidence on the partisan leanings of public-company CEOs.

We use Federal Election Commission (FEC) records to compile a comprehensive database of the political contributions made by more than 3,500 individuals who served as CEOs of S&P 1500 companies between 2000 and 2017. We find that these political contributions display substantial partisan preferences in support of Republican candidates. We identify how this pattern is related to the company’s industry, geographical region, and CEO gender. To highlight the significance of CEOs’ partisan preferences, we show that public companies led by Republican CEOs tend to be less transparent to investors with respect to their political spending. Finally, we conclude by discussing the important policy implications of our analysis.

In 2016, for instance, they gave $31.6 million to Republicans, and $9.6 million to Democrats.

Most Expensive Midterm

From Open Secrets:

It’s official: the 2018 election was the most expensive midterm ever by a large margin, with total spending surpassing $5.7 billion, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The final tally surpasses the conservative $5.2 billion projection the Center released in October.

With more than $5.7 billion shelled out by candidates, parties, committees, PACs and outside groups, the 2018 midterm leapfrogs even the then-record breaking 2008 presidential election which saw nearly $5.3 billion in total spending. It also smashes the previous midterm spending record of $3.8 billion in 2014.

“Just as the 2018 elections brought historic wins for a more diverse group of candidates, they also saw greater spending than we’ve ever seen or anticipated for a midterm election, capitalizing on years of loosened campaign finance regulation and oversight,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics.

Midterm Election Spending (1998-2018)
Infogram

PAC Workaround

Kate Ackley at Roll Call:

Lobbyists for business interests say they’re implementing workarounds to get to know the 32 incoming freshman Democratic House members who have sworn off corporate political action committee dollars.

Those newbies, in town this week for member orientation, comprise the majority of what will be a total of 45 representatives and senators in the 116th Congress who have pledged to reject donations from business PACs.

Instead of PAC dollars, corporate interests plan to rely on individual personal donations from their executives, lobbyists and other consultants, instead of the collective contributions from corporate PACs. In addition, lobbyists will be sure to attend meet-and-greets happening over the coming days and weeks with the new members.

Some lobbyists said they also would rely on policy partnerships with think tanks, grassroots activist organizations and charities — as well as shopping op-eds focused on specific lawmakers — for entree to the newly-elected members of Congress.

...

CR Wooters, a lobbyist at Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas and a former Democratic congressional aide, says corporate clients and the incoming lawmakers will have much to discuss on policy issues, including proposals on paid leave or increasing the federal minimum wage — and PACs aren’t a necessary conduit to those talks.

“Those could be very productive conversations,” Wooters said, as lobbyists educate new members about issues they may never have encountered before. “Businesses can also spend a lot of time educating new members on trade and tariffs, or maybe you have no idea what cybersecurity is. Now you’re having to deal with giant issues like health care and education.”

“The old way of saying, ‘We’ll write them a check’ just feels lazy and dated to me,” Wooters said.