Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Super PACs take center stage in primaries

  As our primary selection day approaches, it appears that we are seeing significant campaign attention from the presidential candidates. The move by the Alabama Legislature to make us an early primary state was a good one.

  As is generally the case, we are seeing negative ads. That is not unusual in politics. The reason that they are employed so often is because they work. Otherwise, the media consultants would not use them. The difference in this year’s presidential contests, however, is who is paying for the ads.

Gene Policinski: True effect of big campaign spending unclear

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.”

Gene Policinski: What was right about high court’s Montana ruling

  Amid the flap over what was supposedly wrong the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week to throw out Montana’s 100-year-old campaign-spending limits, can we take a moment to consider what was right about it?

  The Court held 5-4 that Montana may not continue to limit what corporations and unions may spend in support of or opposition to a political candidate. Some are calling the ruling “Citizen’s United 2,” in a nod to the landmark Citizens United v. FEC decision that dumped such limits for federal elections. That 2010 ruling said it was a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech to restrict such spending.