The Ability to Push for Candidates, Not Just Issues

WASHINGTON (By Michael Luo, NYTimes) October 9, 2010 ― The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Citizens United has absorbed the bulk of the attention when it comes to recent changes on the campaign finance landscape.

But a series of other legal changes this year have also had an impact.

Fallout from another important case, Speechnow.org v. Federal Election Commission, is still emerging. In that decision, a federal court of appeals struck down individual contribution limits to independent groups that want to explicitly urge a vote for or against a candidate.

The decision, along with a pair of advisory opinions issued by the election commission, has led to the emergence this year of so-called super-PACs, or, technically, independent expenditure-only political action committees. They are able to engage expressly in advocacy and to accept unlimited contributions from corporations and individuals but must register with the elections commission and regularly disclose their donors.

More than three dozen groups have organized themselves in this manner. So far, however, they have still been mostly overshadowed by nonprofit groups organized under section 501(c) of the tax code, which include social welfare organizations, labor unions and trade associations. The popularity of those groups among political operatives is rooted in the fact that the Internal Revenue Service does not require them to disclose their donors.

The groups’ ability to protect the privacy of their donors was strengthened in August by a little-noticed statement released by the elections commission’s three Republican members.

A regulation requires groups to disclose, soon after the broadcast of an “electioneering” television commercial, the names of the donors who gave for the purpose of “furthering electioneering communications.” Even under this rule, many groups were still not regularly disclosing donors, contending that they had contributed for general purposes.

The Republican commissioners weakened the disclosure rule further, however, by concluding that donors have to be revealed only if they give for a specific advertisement. And because the commission is evenly split along party lines, the statement effectively loosened disclosure rules.

“Now we’re going to get nothing because no one’s going to say I gave for that specific ad,” said Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic commissioner.