"For Signature Gatherers, Name Game Means Profit"

The L.A. Times offers this report on the initiative petition business in California.

"Reformer Calls for New Limits on Elections"

The Sacramento Bee offers this report, which begins: "Bob Stern, one of the architects of the state's Political Reform Act, said Tuesday that he believes that public financing of elections is the next major change needed to improve elections in California."

FPPC Appeals Ruling in Candidate-Controlled Ballot Measure Case

It sure took the FPPC long enough to decide, and as the FPPC notes in its press release, its rules now remain in effect for the pendency of the appeal (unless, as seems possible, Citizens/Schwarzenegger get an injunction preventing enforcement of the regulation pending appeal---though it looks like the plaintiffs disagree with the FPPC position on what happens pending appeal.) Thanks to Jeremy Thompson for the pointer. A brief Bee story is here.
This is a very important case. I think there is a fair chance that an appeals court agrees with the lower court that these regulations cannot be enforced so as to limit contributions to candiate-controlled ballot measure campaigns in California. But that's not because such limits are unconstitutional. I've argued that such limits likely are now constitutional. But there are serious questions as to whether the FPPC had the authority to enact the regulation and whether its particular wording creates unacceptable amounts of vagueness.
I hope that any appellate court opinion will go out of its way to note that a properly enacted and less vague statute can survive constitutional muster in light of McConnell and despite the Citizens Against Rent Control case.

Disclosure and the Mainstream Media

With all the talk about whether the FEC should require bloggers to reveal on their websites if they are paid by campaigns to blog in favor of the campaigns, Jeff Hauser passes along this link to a Howard Kurtz Washington Post column, which notes the following:

ExxonMobil has funneled money to 40 organizations that have either challenged scientific evidence on global warming or are linked to skeptical scientists who do so, says the forthcoming issue of Mother Jones.

Take Steven Milloy, who writes columns for FoxNews.com, the Washington Times and the New York Sun. ExxonMobil has given $40,000 to the Advancement of Sound Science Center and $50,000 to the Free Enterprise Action Institute, two groups where he is a director and which are registered to his home address in Potomac.

Milloy, who runs the Web site JunkScience.com and is a Cato Institute scholar, wrote one column for Fox headlined "Polar Bear Scare on Thin Ice." A 2001 column for USA Today was titled "Does Global Warming Really Matter?"

Milloy says Mother Jones has taken "old information and sloppily tried to insinuate that ExxonMobil has a say in what I write in my Fox column, which is entirely false. . . . My columns are based on what I believe and no one pays me to believe anything." Despite a mainstream scientific consensus, Milloy says that "the hysteria about global warming is entirely junk science-based" and that he sees no need to disclose the ExxonMobil funding in his writing because it's not "relevant."

ExxonMobil spokeswoman Lauren Kerr says groups funded by the company "address a wide range of issues important to our industry, not just climate change." The oil giant believes the evidence on greenhouse gas emissions "remains inconclusive," she says, and "the funding question only seems to become a relevant issue to the media when it's a question of industry contributions or lobbying -- not when the money comes from the environmental lobby."

The Mother Jones story is here.

Suit to Overturn Virginia Primary Law

See here. Thanks to the Jaded J.D. for the link.

-- 
Rick Hasen
William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law
Loyola Law School
919 Albany Street
Los Angeles, CA  90015-1211
(213)736-1466
(213)380-3769 – fax
rick.hasen@lls.edu
http://electionlawblog.org
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html