| Subject: response to Bauer/news of the day 1/24/04 |
| From: Rick Hasen |
| Date: 1/24/2004, 10:28 AM |
| To: election-law |
| CC: Bob Bauer <Bauer@perkinscoie.com> |
Responding to my post here, Bob Bauer here says that he has not misunderstood McConnell but rather I misread his initial comments. I don't think I have. Bob ended his original post with the following: "Courts in the future will face the choice made by the Anderson Court: will they follow Buckley, or McConnell?"
In his follow-up, Bob suggests that courts will have to make this choice because McConnell was "disingen[uous]" about what Buckley stood for. Although I don't necessarily agree with that label, I agree and have written a long piece (which Bob alludes to) pointing to various places in the McConnell opinion where the Court feigns adherence to Buckley but is really doing something else.
But that's not the point. McConnell is not only the Supreme
Court's most recent case on the constitutionality of various campaign
finance regulations. It also now provides the current definitive view
of what Buckley means. So now that the McConnell Court
has clearly and unequivocally said that the line between express
advocacy and issue advocacy has no constitutional significance, lower
courts are bound to follow that, even if the McConnell Court
may have been disingenuous in claiming that its holding stemmed from a
"plain reading" of Buckley.
See here.
See this
report
on Newsmax.com, which begins: "The head of the National Rifle
Association has laid down the gauntlet to the enemies of free speech
who wrote the McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform" law: We will
not shut up."
See here.
Anyone who thinks that the exchange of access to elected officials for fundraising ended with BCRA should know better. President Bush's re-election committee has given special status to those who help raise at least $100,000 or $200,000 in hard money donations (that is, individual donations of up to $2,000 per person). These bundlers are called "Pioneers" if in the first category and "Rangers" in the second.
There is evidently considerable pressure in some circles to meet these criteria (I have heard anecdotal stories of businesspersons being pressured to give contributions to Bush "credited" to the businessperson's important client). Now comes word that some of these bundlers have reached the $500,000 mark.
Publicampaign Action Fund, a pro-public financing reform group, has a contest to name the bundlers who reach this mark. You can enter the contest here. Micah Sifry (part of Publicampaign) has blogged about the issue here.-- Rick Hasen Professor of Law and William M. Rains Fellow Loyola Law School 919 South Albany Street Los Angeles, CA 90015-1211 (213)736-1466 (213)380-3769 - fax rick.hasen@lls.edu http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html http://electionlawblog.org