Is the challengeintended to “waterdown the standards”of McCain-Feingold?
Supreme Court To Revisit Campaign Finance LawBy Cliff Montgomery – Feb. 1st, 2007The Supreme Court has agreed to revisit the landmark 2002 legislation overhauling the nation’s campaign finance laws, according to the Jan.20th edition of the Washington Post. The court’s decision may settle the role of campaign spending by corporations, unions and special interest groups in time for the 2008 presidential primaries.It will be the first time the court has reviewed the McCain-Feingold law since justices ruled 5 to 4 three years ago that the 2002 act was constitutional. The question to be decided by the judges is whether so-called “issue advocacy ads“, paid for by the general funds of special interest groups and broadcast in the period before a federal election, may mention specific candidates.In December, a three-judge panel in Washington overturned that prohibition; but it is one of the core provisions of the campaign reform law.”The stakes are enormous,” Michael E. Toner, a Federal Election Commission (FEC) member who served on President Bush‘s campaign in 2000, told the Post. “We’re watching this case very closely.”The specific rule against naming a candidate–30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election–is one of the central items in the act governing the role special interest groups may play in an election and, to its supporters, one of the act’s primary points.”One of the advantages of McCain-Feingold is that it’s clear,” Trevor Potter, an adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the law’s namesake, and president of the Campaign Legal Center, told the Post.The justices moved quickly to take the case, which they will hear in April–just in time for a ruling by the end of the court’s summer term. It will make for some strange political bedfellows.The Republican National Committee has been one of the strongest critics of the law, but McCain is one of the party’s leading presidential contenders; he’s even a party to the appeal of the lower court’s decision. The Bush Administration is defending the FEC against Wisconsin Right to Life, the anti-abortion group serving as plaintiff in the suit. The group normally is a strong Bush supporter.Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, told the Post that the Supreme Court debate is “going to be a prime opportunity for opponents of campaign regulations to make some headway in watering down the standards.”But what could make the outcome different this time, he added, is “simply the replacement of Justice O’Connor with Justice Alito.”If the justices uphold the lower-court ruling, Potter feels sure we’ll see additional disputes in the courts and at the FEC about when an special interest group’s commercial would be considered legitimate issue advocacy, and when it would be considered an attempt to influence the outcome of an election.”You will have endless challenges to see where the line should be,” he added.But James Bopp Jr., the Indiana attorney and Republican National Committee member who brought the case on behalf of Wisconsin Right to Life, claims the current prohibition cracks down on groups that are merely intending to influence lawmakers in the manner encouraged by the First Amendment.The right to petition the government, Bopp said, should not be limited.”The court is perfectly capable of drawing a sensible and reasonable line between grass-roots lobbying and influencing an election,” Bopp said.It’s a shame Mr. Bopp’s denial of the obvious shows he is not so sensible. Every special interest group–left-wing, right-wing, you name it–airs numerous ads on radio, television, and the Internet before an election for one purpose: to influence the election.Unless we are to believe they especially pummel the airwaves during that period, then almost entirely cease after the election is over, in the sole hope that the ads will not effect the election outcome in any way.Nor does it work to say all this is mere “freedom of speech,” at least when it comes to “petitioning our lawmakers” before an election. Tying such “speech” to one’s money supply would necessarily create a plutocracy–a system in which only the wealthiest individuals and groups have any real say in how our government is run.By definition, freedom of speech must be an equal affair; everyone therefore has to have an equal ability to petition their lawmakers somehow–with a voice, a letter to a newspaper, a blog–and an equal right to vote on election day.But if freedom to petition one’s lawmakers is to be tied, however tenuously, to one’s bank roll or money supply, it’s self-evident that the wealthiest individuals and groups will have the greatest access to that freedom. And an uneven “freedom” is no real freedom at all, but merely a tyranny dressed in finer clothes.
