Commentary on Campaign Finance Ethics

This is an excellent commentary on the status of SC's campaign finance ethics. In the June primaries five imcumbant legislators, Republicans and Democrats, who supported public education were defeated as a result of these tactics. Expect to see more of this in the November general elections. I ask that you question this type of campaigning and the unwillingness by SCRG to fully disclose contributions.

Campaign finance lawsuit ignores clear meaning of words in statute
By CINDI ROSS SCOPPE
Associate Editor
BACK IN 1997, those who would like to place severe limits on campaign spending pushed a bill through the Vermont legislature that they hoped would give the U.S. Supreme Court a chance to break from its ridiculous money-is-speech doctrine that has controlled campaign finance law for three decades.
Their hopes were bolstered in 2003, when the court upheld the McCain-Feingold law’s prohibition on certain types of unregulated fund-raising and spending.
But by the time the Vermont case made its way to the high court, the addition of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito had raised so many questions about its direction that the more rational reformers held their breath, hoping merely that the case would do no harm.
That happened last week, when the court struck down the overreaching Vermont law without undermining any of the court’s precedents, good or bad. Those precedents distinguish between campaign donations and campaign spending, giving the government much more freedom to regulate donations and less freedom to regulate spending.
Both new justices declined to join with Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, who want to overturn 30 years of precedent by moving in the opposite direction of Vermont’s law — banning even contribution limits. Justice Roberts went so far as to join in a section of the majority opinion that extolled the virtue of precedent.
All that would suggest — although it by no means guarantees — that today’s court would still uphold McCain-Feingold.
That’s important here in South Carolina, because the part of our own campaign finance law that is currently under attack is based on part of that federal law.
I should point out that our law is not nearly as aggressive as McCain-Feingold. The federal law prohibits some special-interest groups from spending money to influence elections. Our law simply requires that such groups report their spending to the public.
It’s this reporting provision that the ironically named South Carolinians for Responsible Government refuses to obey, and has filed a federal lawsuit challenging.
Although last week’s ruling gives me much more confidence, I’ll grant that we cannot be certain that today’s Supreme Court would find our reporting provision constitutional. So the lawsuit cannot be called completely without merit.
But what can be called completely without merit is SCRG’s claim that it isn’t even violating the law. The group, which is pushing vouchers and private school tax credits, repeatedly argues in its lawsuit that it isn’t covered because it hasn’t done anything to “influence the outcome of an elective office” — the language that triggers our disclosure law.
This spring, a spokesman for the group told The Post and Courier: “We haven’t done anything that would be defined as influencing the outcome of the election.”
That’s a fascinating choice of words, because what the group admits it has done precisely meets the definition that state law gives to “influence the outcome of an elective office.”
Under that definition, which voucher/tax credits backer Gov. Mark Sanford worked very hard to get passed in his first year in office, “influence the outcome of an elective office” includes “any communication made, not more than forty-five days before an election, which promotes or supports a candidate or attacks or opposes a candidate, regardless of whether the communication expressly advocates a vote for or against a candidate.”
That bright-line test in our law — attack a candidate by name within 45 days of an election, and you’re covered — is the idea that was borrowed from McCain-Feingold. It was designed to trump the word games that special-interest groups played to avoid the old federal law, which only covered ads that used such “magic words” as “Vote for Jones” or “Defeat Smith.” What the special interests would do was run attack ads that avoided the “magic words” by saying “Call Senator Jones and tell him he’s wrong.”
That is, essentially, what SCRG did in last month’s Republican primary.
In early May — within the 45-day window — it ran radio ads against six House Republicans who opposed its voucher plan. The ads claimed that children are “trapped in failing schools” and touted “school choice” and $1,000 tax credits for private school as the solution. The ad in Rep. Bill Cotty’s district concluded this way: “If Bill Cotty can give tax credits to movie makers, hybrid car owners, and out-of-state corporations, can’t he at least give one tax credit to parents? Tell Bill Cotty to stand up for parents and kids — not the special interests. Call him in Columbia.... Urge him to support school choice.”
The group argues that the ads weren’t designed to influence the election but rather to lobby Mr. Cotty and the other targets to vote for its bill when it was offered in the House that week.
But even if you believe that its motive was to pressure Mr. Cotty to change his vote (and I don’t), the fact is that the ad still precisely meets the definition in our law of “influence the outcome of an elective office.”
So, by the way, do all those silly little postcards that SCRG and a similar group shoveled into the districts of Mr. Cotty and the other targeted Republicans in the weeks leading up to the June 13 primary. And most of those postcards had nothing to do with the voucher debate; some had nothing to do with any legislation that had even been proposed — a fact that would seem to undercut any claims of “lobbying” that the group might use for a constitutional attack on the law.