CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

SUMMARY

  • Getting elected in America is very expensive.
  • For over 100 years, corporations were prohibited from donating to political campaigns and the very wealthy were limited in how much they could donate
  • Gradually, as one lawsuit after another dismantled campaign finance regulations, it became legal for very wealthy private and corporate donors to fund political committees with unlimited amounts of money
  • In the 2010 Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporate political donations are free speech that is protected by the First Amendment
  • As all of this was happening, campaigns were becoming increasingly expensive, certainly above what an average candidate can manage.
  • Candidates have come to depend on substantial financial and logistical aid from organizations such as political parties and political action committees.
  • A candidate that receives such aid to get elected must anticipate the need for future aid from those same sources when considering re-election.
  • With candidates so dependent on wealthy donors, influential party committees, and out of state political organizations, it isn’t hard to see how the needs of their donors can become more important than the needs of their constituents.

THE GIST OF IT

Trying to change how money can be raised and spent in support of a political campaign is a different challenge for us than all of the other democracy reforms being proposed.  New Jersey legislators can write laws to solve any of the problems we’ve identified in our democratic practices except one; how money that is raised outside of New Jersey is spent inside New Jersey by Political Action Committees that are not based in New Jersey.

Very influential Political Action Committees raise money from anonymous sources that are, literally, all over the world. They then focus those enormous reserves of money on political races where they feel a strategic need to win.  Compared to what local political organizations have available to spend, spending by Political Action Committees from outside of New Jersey can be overwhelming and can certainly determine the outcome of a race, especially where the opposite party isn’t responding with massive spending of their own.

The United States Congress passed a law that prohibited political donations by corporations to federal candidates after an insurance company was found to have donated $48,700 (About $1,500,000 in 2022 dollars) to Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential campaign in 1904.  From Wikipedia, “The Tillman Act of 1907 (34 Stat. 864) was the first campaign finance law in the United States. The Act prohibited monetary contributions to federal candidates by corporations and nationally chartered (interstate) banks.”

After having successfully regulated political donations for over 100 years, lawsuits such as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission removed all constraints on outsize private and corporate political donations (aka “Big Money”) and the consequences have been just horrible.  How we do politics and elections all across the United States has become a matter of what Big Money wants, Big Money gets.

Back here in New Jersey, we have limited campaign finance regulations.  THIS CHART shows what we can contribute depending on who we are and what our relationship is with the political parties, campaigns, etc. that we are trying to donate money to.  As we’ve said, the problem isn’t the limited amount of money being managed by campaigns in New Jersey, the problem is the money that is organized outside of New Jersey and then spent on campaigns happening inside New Jersey.

There is an organization, American Promise, that is already doing the very noble job of attempting to get this very big problem back under control.  The New Jersey chapter of American Promise uses a Facebook group to organize their group, you can find it HERE.

Our ability to fix this national problem from within New Jersey is limited.  The New Jersey legislature has already passed bills expressing our support for a constitutional amendment to eliminate corporate free speech, an integral step to stopping unlimited corporate donations to political campaigns.  Only through a constitutional amendment will this problem be solved.

WHY ENDING CITIZENS UNITED WOULD BE GOOD FOR NEW JERSEY

Ridiculously expensive political campaigns give ambitious candidates no other option but to go to political parties for help.  Having received that help once, and knowing they’ll need it again when it comes time to get re-elected, it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that they would put the agenda of their political donors and party committees before the needs of their constituents.

The effect of having candidates, elected to office only by the overwhelming influence of wealth and power, is that they are less likely to represent the will of the people.  In bringing the cost of campaigns down, funding campaigns with public money, and creating a system of elections where more candidates can participate, candidates of both parties would be free to spend less time fundraising and more time representing and communicating with their constituents.

As said in our introduction piece, New Jersey is next to last in the United States in how we manage our fiscal responsibilities after decades of near absolute control by the two political parties. This isn’t a system that was designed to benefit New Jersey residents.

CURRENT STATUS

According to AmericanPromise.net, twenty two states have passed legislation calling on Congress to amend the US Constitution and eliminate corporate political free speech while also placing rigid limits on donations to political organizations of all types.

The State of New Jersey legislature passed Senate bill SR47 and Assembly bill AR86 in 2012.  These identical bills call on Congress to pass a 28th amendment to our Constitution and make clear that political free speech is strictly reserved for a “natural person”, as in a post-natal human being, and not a corporation.

An amendment to the US Constitution must pass in both houses of Congress with a two-thirds majority.  Once submitted to the states for ratification, three fourths of the states must vote to ratify the amendment.  Read about the process for passing a constitutional amendment, HERE.

LEARN MORE

‘Corporate Political Spending Is Bad Business’, Dorothy S. Lund & Leo E. Strine, Jr., January, 2022

https://hbr.org/2022/01/corporate-political-spending-is-bad-business

‘Politics For Sale’, Michael Waldman, 18 October, 2022

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/politics-sale

“Billionaires Provided 15 Percent of Funding for the Midterms’, Michael Waldman, 22 November, 2022

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/billionaires-provided-15-percent-funding-midterms

Dark money, https://www.opensecrets.org/dark-money/basics

More about dark money, https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/watchdog/2018/11/27/njs-campaign-finance-laws-behind-times-so-dark-money-can-pour/1810882002/