[EL] What are Donald Trump’s Views on Campaign Finance Regulation?

[Sean Parnell]

No problem, wish there were more, but, well, in-depth policy specifics haven’t exactly been The Donald’s thing in 2016.

 

Sean

 

From: Pildes, Rick [mailto:pildesr at mercury.law.nyu.edu] 
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2016 1:07 PM
To: Sean Parnell <sean at impactpolicymanagement.com>; 'Rick Hasen' <rhasen at law.uci.edu>; law-election at uci.edu
Subject: RE: [EL] What are Donald Trump’s Views on Campaign Finance Regulation?

 

Sean, thanks for sending that information.

 

Best, 

Rick

 

Richard H. Pildes

Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law

NYU School of Law

40 Washington Square South, NY, NY 10012

212 998-6377

 

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu <mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>  [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Sean Parnell
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2016 1:01 PM
To: 'Rick Hasen'; law-election at uci.edu <mailto:law-election at uci.edu> 
Subject: Re: [EL] What are Donald Trump’s Views on Campaign Finance Regulation?

 

One of my clients, the Leadership Project for America, has attempted to summarize and document the views and histories of all the presidential candidates on a wide range of issues, including campaign finance regulation. He hasn’t said much of late, but he did address the topic in his 2000 book The America We Deserve. Below I’ve cut and pasted how we summarized his views on campaign finance:

 

Trump has suggested he views contributions to candidates as an effective way to buy access, influence, and favorable decisions, <http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/lott-smith-trump-big-lie-buying-politicians-article-1.2329706> 177 but has otherwise been quiet in recent years about limits on campaign contributions and political speech. In his 2000 book The America We Deserve he favored a ban on soft-money contributions to political parties, opposed contribution limits, and supported “full and fast” disclosure of campaign contributions. <http://stanfordpolitics.com/2015/09/trumps-dirty-dance/> 178

 

Link here <http://leadershipprojectforamerica.org/candidate/donald-trump/>  (you’ll need to go to the ‘American Exceptionalism’ section and scroll down to ‘Religious Liberty & Free Speech”).

 

Occasionally, of course, Trump has indicated he no longer believes what he once did on an issue, so this may not reflect his current thinking, but it is the most recent available as far as I know.

 

 

Sean Parnell

President, Impact Policy Management LLC

Alexandria, Virginia

571-289-1374

sean at impactpolicymanagement.com <mailto:sean at impactpolicymanagement.com> 

 

 

 


 <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=81159> What are Donald Trump’s Views on Campaign Finance Regulation?


Posted on  <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=81159> March 23, 2016 3:01 pm by  <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=7> Richard Pildes

Has Donald Trump expressed any position, or been asked his position, on how elections should be financed?

We know he thinks large contributions are corrupting ( <http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trumps-surprisingly-honest-lessons-big-money-politics/story?id=32993736> “I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. That’s a broken system.”).  We know he considers SuperPacs a “ <http://www.cnhttp/www.cnbc.com/2015/10/26/donald-trump-latest-super-pacs-are-a-scam.htmlbc.com/2015/10/26/donald-trump-latest-super-pacs-are-a-scam.html> scam.”  And a significant part of his appeal to supporters in the primaries is that he is self-funding his campaign.  As others have pointed out, on money in politics, he sounds not all that different from Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton.

 

So what is his position on how to fix the system he considers broken?  Would he favor public financing?  Would he favor caps on how much outside groups or individuals could spend, which would require overturning Buckley?  Or caps on how much campaigns could spend too?  Or other approaches?

I ask in all seriousness.  A while back, I noted that historically, the demands to regulate the role of money in American democracy had often united populist forces on both the right and left of the political spectrum.  The Jacksonian tradition, to which Trump can perhaps be considered an heir, was centrally about reducing the perceived influence of big money on American democracy.  On the Supreme Court, Justices from the Western United States who usually were considered somewhat conservative (White and O’Connor) or conservative (Rehnquist) had voted to uphold campaign finance regulations.  In more recent decades, the issue became far more polarized in partisan terms, at least among elected officials.

Trump’s indictment of the current system has struck a bell with his supporters.  Knowing what he would propose to fix the system would be of considerable interest.

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20160324/eaded1da/attachment.html>