It's the final week of the Supreme Court's 2011-2012 term and a number of decisions are pending, including one for the suite of cases dealing with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. As we await what now appears to be impending invalidation of the individual mandate of Obamacare, several noteworthy decisions have already come down the pike.
In today's decision in American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock, the conservative majority reasserted their ruling from the 2010 Citizens United case by invalidating a Montana state law prohibiting corporations from funding state and local electoral campaigns. The Court majority ruled that the holding in the Citizens United case also applies to applicable state laws. This decision, as with the decision in the Citizens United case, fell strictly on ideological lines.
The implications? Where states and municipalities like Montana once had restrictions on campaign contributions, state legislature and city council races are now open to unlimited corporate funding. Super PACs with substantial corporate backing are now allowed to flood even low level elections with cash, enlarging further the role of money in campaigns down to the lowest level.
A major refrain from conservatives on campaign finance is that corporate contributions do not effect congressional voting habits. A recent paper from the conservative policy think tank, Manhattan Institute, carries this opinion, while noting that corporate and lobbyist contributions do impact policy making.
The argument goes that there is so much money at the federal level that it would be extremely difficult to unduly influence a single congressman, let alone the entire Congress. But what happens unlimited corporate donations trickle down to the state legislature or the municipal level? The potential for corruption is enormous.
The current state of play under Citizens United seems absurd. While rich donors have always held significant and outsized influence in the political process, the advent of the Super PAC makes money the undisputed king in elections while simultaneously reducing campaign transparency.
There are some holes in this analogy, but bear with me. Imagine a speaker with a clear partisan leaning is giving a talk at a nearby auditorium. You oppose his viewpoints, and you are very wealthy. You decide to buy up most of the tickets to the event, and proceed to distribute the tickets to your co-partisans.
When the speaker takes the stage, you and your compatriots continually shout him down. As you and your friends have a right to free speech, but not a right to silence others, the speaker summons security to remove the offending parties. But, as so many of the attendees are prone to drowning him out, the speaker's right to speech is infringed. He might get in a few words edgewise, but his speech is lost in the din.
This is close to the system we have now. When Super PACs dump money on the side of a particular issue or candidate, they can effectively drown out the other side. This American Life reported on this phenomenon during the 2010 midterm elections, in the race between Dan Lungren and Ami Bera in California's third Congressional district. While federal candidates from both political parties will marshal substantial Super PAC support in November's election, at the lower levels, large infusions of cash could in many cases buy elections. It's easy to imagine an election for county supervisor or the campaign for a ballot initiative being overwhelmed by a influx of corporate cash.
For once, could the next logical step not be escalation? Not under the regime created by Citizens United and reaffirmed today. Big money is here to stay.
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