news of the day 6/30/04

"Only Money: Campaign Finance Reform Bites Supporters in the Rear"

Reason Online offers this report.

"Senate Hopeful Finances Her Own Bid"

The St. Petersburg Times offers this report.

Treglia Named to L.A. Ethics Commission

Those of you who know Sean Treglia from his days at Pew working on campaign finance issues may be interested in his recent appointment to the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission. See here.

"Parties Hoover Up the Money"

The Hill offers this report, which begins: " The Republican and Democratic national parties have defied predictions that they would crumble in the aftermath of campaign-finance reform, in part by slashing the signature perks of the soft-money era. Shattering expectations widely held as recently as this year, the six national Republican and Democratic party committees are raising more hard money than they raised hard and soft money combined during the last presidential election cycle, 1999-2000."

See also this Campaigns and Elections report (link via Politicalwire.com).

"Watchdog Group Complains About Nader Aid"

A.P. offers this report.

"G.O.P. Accuses Group of Fund-Raising Scam"

A.P. offers this report, which begins: "The Republican National Committee filed a complaint Tuesday accusing a Texas group of posing as a GOP organization to raise money by phone using an Indian telemarketing firm and through fund-raising mailings."

"Kerry Has to Decide Soon About Repaying Big Loan"

The New York Times offers this report, which begins: "Among the many strategic decisions facing Senator John Kerry in the coming weeks, one may hit closer to home than others, whether to use campaign contributions to repay the $6.4 million that he lent his campaign or pay it off over time using his own money." UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times offers this report.

New paper on racial gerrymandering claims

Ethan Leib has posted on SSRN Ugly White Districts: What Should Sandy Do?. Here is the abstract:

A case just decided by a three-judge panel in the Southern District of New York, where plaintiffs challenge the 2002 New York State Senate redistricting plan, presents a new kind of redistricting challenge. See Rodriguez v. Pataki, 2004 WL 503748 (S.D.N.Y.). Rodriguez raises the issue of what to do about bizarrely-shaped white districts that are constructed or preserved using race as an obvious motivation - apparently in violation of Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993), which held ugly black districts to be violative of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause - but are adjacent to majority-minority districts that must be preserved in accordance with both Sections 2 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the laws forbidding dilution and retrogression of majority-minority districts. Here, I ask what Justice Sandra Day O'Connor should do about unsightly majority white districts that are drawn principally to maintain white majorities, even if such districts also help fashion adjacent majority-minority districts required by the Voting Rights Act.

-- 
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