March 25, 2011: Law Expert Believes Supreme Court Will Again Rule in Favor of Wealthy Independent Campaign Donors

Law professor Richard Hasen writes that an Arizona case before the Supreme Court may add to the abilities of wealthy individual and corporate donors to influence elections. In the case of McComish v. Bennett, Arizona’s public campaign financing laws are being challenged. Public financing of campaigns (i.e. using tax dollars for campaigns) is entirely voluntary, but candidates who do opt into the system may not accept outside donations. Privately funded candidates face no such restrictions, but receive no public campaign funding. If a privately funded candidate spends significantly more on the campaign than his/her publicly funded opponent, Arizona’s law has a so-called “trigger” provision that provides matching funds, to a point, to make the spending somewhat more equitable. The case before the Court was brought on behalf of wealthy private donors, and is based on the complaint that the matching funds provision is a violation of their clients’ freedom of speech. Hasen predicts that the Court, with its conservative majority and its ruling in the Citizens United case (see January 21, 2010), will rule in favor of the wealthy plaintiffs and strike down some or all of the Arizona law. Arizona imposes no limits on the spending of outside groups, Hasen argues, and if the matching funds provision is triggered, he asks, “What’s the worst thing that can happen if a wealthy candidate spends gobs of cash running against a candidate who has opted into the public financing system?” He answers, “The publicly financed candidate gets more government dollars to campaign, and the voters hear more speech.” Hasen notes that several conservative legal experts have found that the “free speech” argument is specious. Conservative Ninth Circuit Judge Andrew Kleinfeld wrote against the argument in a previous ruling in the case, observing that in his view “there is no First Amendment right to make one’s opponent speak less, nor is there a First Amendment right to prohibit the government from subsidizing one’s opponent, especially when the same subsidy is available to the challenger if the challenger accepts the same terms as his opponent.” And Charles Fried, the solicitor general during the Reagan administration, filed an amicus brief in the case arguing that it is the wealthy candidates and interest groups who “in reality are seeking to restrict speech.” Hasen believes that the conservative majority will rule in favor of restricting the “speech” of publicly funded candidates in Arizona (and by extension in other states) because, as it ruled in a 2008 case, such financing laws were “an impermissible attempt to level the playing field between wealthy and non-wealthy candidates.” Hasen is blunt in his conclusion, stating, “Five conservative […] justices on the Supreme Court appear to have no problem with the wealthy using their resources to win elections—even if doing so raises the danger of increased corruption of the political system.” [Slate, 3/25/2011] Hasen is correct: the Court will rule 5-4 in the case, which will be renamed Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom PAC v. Bennett, that the matching funds provision is unconstitutional (see June 27, 2011).