[EL] Alex Polikoff comments on "press" and Citizens United

Of course (whatever the election law list is). Happy to participate in this way. Alex

From: Richard Winger [mailto:richardwinger@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 11:54 AM
To: Alex Polikoff
Subject: RE: Citizens United, etc.

Thanks for your good response. It occurs to me that members of the election law list would enjoy seeing your response. If you say it's OK, I'll send it along to the list, and will include no additional input from myself except the point that you had said it would be OK to share our exchange.

--- On Mon, 3/7/11, Alex Polikoff <apolikoff@bpichicago.org> wrote:

From: Alex Polikoff <apolikoff@bpichicago.org>
Subject: RE: Citizens United, etc.
To: richardwinger@yahoo.com
Date: Monday, March 7, 2011, 9:42 AM

Mr. Winger,

Thank you for your thoughts and kind words. You make two points to which I’ll try to respond briefly.

The first is that it would be unthinkable for government to tell newspapers that they can’t write editorials about candidates for public office, yet you doubt that any press exemption could be devised that wouldn’t be utterly arbitrary. I agree with the first part but not with the second. Yes, it would be challenging to devise a non-arbitrary test for what constitutes “press,” but not I think impossible.

Your second point is that superior monetary resources don’t always translate into electoral victory, citing the example of Jesse Ventura. I agree here too, but what carries the day for me is the overall picture, not the aberrational or unusual case. I fear that under Citizens United the overall picture will soon come to be that the positions of the (big business) corporations will have nothing but limited and ineffective opposition.

(To illustrate. Some have pointed out that corporations not infrequently give to both parties. Yes, but if they support Democratic candidates who are supportive of corporate positions – and assuming Republican candidates already mostly are – the result will soon be an erosion of opposition in both parties to a different view.}

Thank you again for your thoughtful comment.

Cordially,

Alex

From: Richard Winger [mailto:richardwinger@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 7:29 PM
To: apolikoff@bpichicago.org
Subject: Citizens United, etc.

I read your piece about Citizens United. I only found it because electionlawblog linked to it. I thought you wrote the most convincing piece, setting forth the anti-Citizens United, that I have ever read. But I am still not persuaded to dislike the opinion, because we all know big newspapers like the New York Times are profit-making corporations. And I can't see any objective way for a government to bestow exemptions for "press" without being utterly arbitrary. The one thing your article didn't seem to discuss was newspapers and other for-profit media corporations. It would obviously be unthinkable to give the government the power to tell newspapers that they can't write editorials about candidates for federal office.

Also your piece seemed a little bit too dismissive of the voters. When Jesse Ventura was elected Governor of Minnesota on the Reform Party ticket in 1998, he only had one-tenth of the campaign funds that either of his major party opponents had. But he still won. I believe that if a candidate has the best message, and he or she has enough money to get it out, he or she can win even if the opponents vastly outspend him or her.

I live in California and publish Ballot Access News.