"Free Speech'" and "Legal Bullying"

by Julia Rosen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Roger Salazar has been firing back about the shaky legal ground the Pro-Hillary 527 he is working for is treading on, or will be treading on when they ask for money and pay to air ads.

There isn't anything in our efforts that would warrant such a barefaced attempt to quell free-speech with this kind of unsupported legal bullying.

The American Leadership Project was organized in strict adherence to all new federal rules and regulations as a result of a recent Supreme Court decision. It was established to highlight issues of importance to middle-class families. The type of 527 we have organized does not intend to engage in express advocacy or the functional equivalent of express advocacy and so will not qualify as a political committee under the Federal Election Commission rules, but it will, however, fund "electioneering communications" - ads that feature a candidate and run within the 30 days before the election - and so will have reporting requirements with the FEC as well as the IRS. We intend to be open, transparent and to make all full and appropriate disclosures as required by the law.

I am no lawyer, but what they are arguing is that this organization is not actually working to help Hillary Clinton win the Democratic primary.  It means that they cannot ask people for money to help Hillary.  Someone else can sort all of that out.  

What I am concerned with is the messaging Salazar is using.  I'm sorry, but questioning the legality of this organization has not approached anything close to bullying.  There is no big powerful entity trying to shut up the little guy.  Not to mention the fact that they are twisting themselves into pretzels to be able to claim that this is legal with phrases like "functional equivalent of express advocacy".  

This is a bunch of really rich people trying to evade campaign contribution limits.  Those of us raising concern about this are not trying to take away their free speech.  We just don't want them to have a bigger megaphone than the rest of us and have disproportionate impact on the outcome of this race.  The use of "free speech" to talk about campaign finance law is a right wing frame.  It is extremely distressing to see it used by a Democrat in the context of campaign where one candidate is outspending the other on the basis of an unprecedented amount of small donors.

(more on the flip)
This to me is the perfect example of the impact of BCRA (McCain-Feingold) on campaign financing.  BCRA both raised the hard dollar contribution limit and attempted to eliminate the use of soft money.  Democrats were expected to be hit the hardest due to our over-reliance on large donors and the Republican's success at creating a large small donor base, mostly through direct mail.  The goal was to reduce the ability of people to spend large chunks of money on elections.  The Supreme Court upheld these restrictions due to the inherent corrosive influence of money on politics and impact of the appearance of corruption.

Now 6 years later we have a race where one candidate relied on large checks from a small pool of donors and the other raised more money from what is now nearly one million people who have given small contributions.  Hillary Clinton now has a group of donors who want to go back to the days of soft money.  It is a full-fledged attack on BCRA.  Barack Obama's fundraising is the dream of campaign finance reformers coming to life before their eyes.  

If you go to the Barack Obama home page right now you will see a big flash graphic that reads "The Goal ONE Million People Who Own This Campaign".  Those now 951,887 (and growing) people who have donate to the campaign have bought the candidate.  In contrast, you have the major donors to Clinton who own her campaign crowing about "free speech" and cutting six figure checks to try and make sure Clinton is not drowned out by nearly one million people.

Look at the messaging Hillary Clinton is using.  This is from a campaign fundraising email she sent out yesterday.

If we want to win in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont, we've got to even the odds. We can't let the Obama campaign overwhelm us financially. Today, I am calling on you and other online supporters to act together, making sure we have the resources to create a fair, level playing field on March 4.

The hundreds of thousands of small Obama donors are in Clinton's mind and those of her big donors creating an unfair, unlevel playing field.  So they are crowing about "free speech" and saying it isn't fair when people tell us that we aren't legally allowed to run a stealth campaign mirroring the messaging of the official campaign.

It is dispiriting to me to see fellow Democrats bemoaning the influence of small donors.  We should be celebrating it and figuring out how we can free our own state and politicians from the corrosive influence of big donors who want something in return for their money.  We shouldn't have the spokesman for the California Democratic Party, which should be working on their own small donor program accusing us of bullying.

This seems like a very clear contrast between the old way of doing things and the new school approach.  Democrats will go much further by running campaigns and candidates that rely on small donors and volunteers and not simply top down organizing and big media buys.