Campaign
Contributions
There is a growing trend of lawsuits
filed against laws that restrict the amount of money that can be donated by PAC’s,
lobbyists, and individuals to candidates that they wish to support. Recently, citizens
of Minnesota have joined in on the trend by filing a suit against one of the
states campaign finance laws. The lawsuit comes at the heels of the recent
McCutcheon decision. In this case, McCutcheon and the Republican National
Committee went to the Supreme Court to argue that the law is a violation of an individual’s
first amendment right to support a candidate of his/her choice; the fact that
there is limit on how much money is contributed to a candidate, and to how many
candidates a citizen is willing to support is not the government’s business.
The Federal Election Commission, along with others who side with campaign
contribution restrictions, explains that laws are needed to limit the amount
contributed to a candidate in order to reduce and fight corruption (Sullivan,
2014) .
The lawsuit in Minnesota is aimed at
getting rid of a law that pertains to state elections, unlike McCutcheon. Minnesota
currently has laws that limit contributions from “special sources” that
include: “PAC’s, lobbyists, “large contributors”, and citizens who may give up
more than half the base contribution limits for state races (Henry, 2014) .” Contributors can give up
$4,000 dollars to a gubernatorial candidate and $1,000 for House races;
but once gubernatorial candidates reach $730,000 and House candidates reach
$12,500,future contributors are limited to only giving half of the base limit. Paul
Sherman, from the Institute of Justice, explains that in the McCutcheon case
the Supreme Court held that, “contribution limits can only used to prevent quid
pro quo corruption and are otherwise a burden on free speech (Henry, 2014) .” Further on, the
question is raised on what makes special source contributions corrupting if
they aren’t corrupting prior to the candidates hitting his/her special sources
cap (Henry, 2014) ?
References
Henry, D. (2014, April 21). Campaign finance
lawsuits in Minnesota and other states take aim at contribution limits. Retrieved
from MinnPost:
www.minnpost.com/effective-democracy/2014/04/campaign-finance-lawsuits-minnesota-and-other-states-take-aim-contributi
Sullivan, S. (2014, April 2). Everything you need
to know about McCutcheon v. FEC. Retrieved from The Washington Post:
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/10/08/supreme-court-takes-up-the-sequel-to-citizens-united/
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