WASHINGTON — There’s one result from the election
that we likely won’t know for months or even years: the full meaning of this
year’s massive run-up in campaign spending.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in its Citizens United v.
Federal Election Commission decision in 2010, freed corporations, unions and
others to spend as much on elections as they wish — setting up the
circumstances for the financial version of Superstorm Sandy in this year’s
races.
The Court voted 5-4 that limits on corporate
spending violated First Amendment political free-speech rights. Justice Anthony
Kennedy, writing for the majority, said there was “no basis for the proposition
that, in the context of political speech, the Government may impose
restrictions on certain disfavored speakers.”
The decision was attacked immediately by a variety
of public-interest groups that advocate changing how campaigns are financed.
And just days after the ruling — with several justices sitting in front of him
— President Obama used his State of the Union address to call for bipartisan
congressional action to roll back the decision.
“Last week,” Obama said, “The Supreme Court reversed
a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests … to spend
without limit in our elections. Well, I don’t think American elections should
be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests.”
No legislation made it to Obama’s desk, but the
“open floodgate” forecast proved accurate.
An Oct. 31 report in the Huffington Post said that
in 2008, the Obama and McCain campaigns spent more than $1 billion. This year,
the posting said, expenditures by the two major campaigns “have already sailed
past the $2 billion mark.”
The day before the Nov. 6 election, National Public
Radio said a report by the Center for Responsive Politics “places the total
cost of the 2012 elections at an estimated $6 billion, which would make it the
most expensive election in U.S. history.”
Two days after the voting, The New York Times opined
that although the outpouring of cash reshaped the GOP nomination race, and
shored up some Republican incumbents, “the prize most sought by the emerging
class of mega-donors remained outside their grasp.”
And the Huffington Post noted Nov. 7 an outcome from
Citizens United that had not gotten much attention: “Organized labor’s larger
contribution this election may have been its outreach to non-union voters,
something that wasn’t possible until the legal changes” resulting from the
ruling. Union volunteers now were free to “knock on the doors of non-members
for the first time, vastly expanding organized labor’s canvassing and
get-out-the-vote operations,” the report said.
A major question looking ahead is whether or not
so-called mega-donors will be willing in upcoming races to spend such massive
sums that may well cancel each other out or prove ineffective.
Linda McMahon, a former pro-wrestling executive,
reportedly has spent nearly $100 million of her own funds in twice failing to
win a U.S. Senate seat in Connecticut. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson spent
“tens of millions” of dollars in support of eight candidates, through
contributions to political action committees, The New York Times reported. None
of the eight was elected on Nov. 6.
The ongoing national discussion about balancing
First Amendment concerns against worries about the supposed negative influence
of massive spending and contributions will include:
-Lawmakers revisiting the century-old idea of
corporations as “persons” having various legal rights including freedom of
speech, with ramifications beyond campaign spending, possibly even into
criminal law.
-Accurately assessing whether the uptick in spending
in state and federal elections really altered outcomes, particularly in the
final stages of campaigns where it might have provided one candidate with a
late advantage.
-Transparency in identifying donors that could
undermine the long-held right to anonymous speech, which stretches back to the
nation’s founding.
-An Obama administration decision about continuing
to support moves to reverse Citizens United given the apparent benefit of new
levels of support by groups such as unions that typically favor Democrats.
Finding the right speech-spending balance also pits
two core principles against each other: full exercise of Americans’ protected
right to speak loudly on politics and public issues, vs. negating the
corrupting influence in elections and government policy that may accompany the
presence of “big money.”
The results are still out on all of those 2012
election-night questions.
About the author: Gene Policinski, senior vice
president and executive director of the First Amendment Center, is a veteran
journalist whose career has included work in newspapers, radio, television and
online.
This article was published by the First Amendment
Center.
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