Campaign financing: A flood of hidden cash

last updated 8 January 2015

For all the talk about angry Tea Partiers and economic ennui, the 2010 congressional elections could turn on “cold, anonymous cash,” said Michael Waldman in U.S. News & World Report. A flood of $80 million from shadowy new groups with names like Americans for Job Security is pouring into partisan TV ads and other campaign activities—about 85 percent of it to benefit Republican candidates. This massive and “alarmingly sneaky” outpouring of cash comes to us thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in its Citizens United decision this year broke with “nearly a century of settled law to hold that corporate campaign spending limits violate the First Amendment.” Since that landmark 5-to-4 decision, a host of new special-interest groups have come into being, organizing themselves as nonprofits, which don’t have to disclose their donors. “It’s bad enough that public offices can be bought,” said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. “It’s unconscionable we can’t even know who the buyers are.”

Oh, stop whining, said Jacob Sullum in the New York Post. Democrats are facing “an election fiasco of historic proportions,” so they’re already seizing on “a pre-emptive excuse: It’s all because of Citizens United.” That’s nonsense, since as polls show, voters turned against them months ago, because President Obama and the Democrats have used their power to indulge in an orgy of big-government spending. “Advocacy has no impact unless it persuades people.” As for why these groups don’t disclose their donors, former Republican Chairman Ed Gillespie recently pointed out that there’s a legitimate “fear of retribution.” After the California referendum that made gay marriage in that state illegal, for example, gay activists harassed conservative donors and organizers at their homes and jobs.

So “if you disclose political activity, people might … respond!” said Jonathan Chait in The New Republic. “Heaven forbid!” Boycotting corporations or sending unfriendly e-mails to political opponents is all part of democracy. Funny, not long ago conservatives argued that political contributions were a form of free speech and should be unlimited, as long as they were “transparent.” But last month, when Democrats tried to pass a law requiring disclosure of the contributions to these new, secretive groups, Republicans voted unanimously to block it. Now that the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc has approved both unlimited corporate spending and secrecy, Republican support for transparency will “fall down the memory hole.”