Tag Archives: party-leadership

The Lawyer Behind the Supreme Court’s Latest Campaign Finance Decision Has a New Cause: Sarah Palin for Senate

Mother Jones

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When the Supreme Court recently demolished yet another chunk of the nation’s campaign finance laws, Dan Backer arguably cheered louder than anyone. It was Backer, a Washington, DC-area attorney active in conservative politics, who had convinced an Alabama businessman named Shaun McCutcheon to challenge the government’s limit on the number of candidates, party committees, and political action committees an individual can contribute to in a single election cycle. (The basic limits on how much money that donor can give to each candidate, party, or PAC remain intact.) Backer, who represented McCutcheon, responded to the news of the Supreme Court’s decision by tweeting (in apparent reference to William Wallace in Braveheart): “FREEEEDOMMMMM!!!!”

Backer’s victory is shining some light on another high-profile cause of his: Convincing Sarah Palin to run for US Senate.

In an email headlined “Palin for Senate” recently blasted out by a PAC called the Tea Party Leadership Fund, Backer writes, “Sarah’s the proven leader we need.” He goes on, “She has a better grasp on world politics, and she knows what it means to cherish and protect our American freedoms far better than THE MAN WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE LEADING THE FREE WORLD.” Backer slams incumbent Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) for spending “too much time in Washington, DC, begging the Obama administration for favors rather than representing the good people of Alaska.” Palin supporters need to act quick, Backer warns: The window for her to get into the race “has almost closed.” And so Backer asks recipients to sign a petition and gather enough signatures to “to push Sarah Palin over the top in a critical run for Alaska’s Senate seat in 2014.”

In an interview, Backer said almost 100,000 people had signed the Palin for Senate petition. If Palin did enter the race,he said the Tea Party Leadership PAC would bolster her candidacy with direct mail and radio ads. “Nobody’s going to be a greater agent for change than Sarah Palin from Alaska,” Backer told me. “She will bring something to the race and she will disrupt the Senate. And disruption is good.”

Read the email:

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Backer’s plea isn’t entirely out of left field. Palin has made noises about running for Senate in Alaska. Last summer, she said on Sean Hannity’s radio show that she was considering a run. “I’ve considered it because people have requested me considering it,” she said. “But I’m still waiting to see what the lineup will be and hoping that…there will be some new blood, new energy, not just kind of picking from the same old politicians in the state.” But this email comes when it’s getting late for a possible Palin campaign. (The filing deadline is six weeks away.) Right now, the much-watched Alaska Senate race pits Begich against Republican Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell. Most polling shows Begich in the lead, but the seat is considered a toss-up Senate race that could determine which party ends up controlling the upper chamber.

Backer’s email asks for more than just a signature; it includes a plea to donate $5 or more to the Tea Party Leadership Fund PAC. (Backer is the PAC’s treasurer.) A cynical political observer might wonder if this “Palin for Senate” effort could be more of a fundraising ploy than a realistic attempt to get Palin into the race. Campaign records show that the Tea Party Leadership Fund has so far raked in $3.8 million in the 2013-14 election cycle, and most of that money—almost $9 of every $10—has gone to fundraising, legal fees (to Backer’s own firm), consulting, and other related expenses.

But Backer says the Tea Party Leadership PAC has spent so much non-electoral money because it was building its donor lists during 2013, an off year. This year, he says, the PAC plans to be a counterweight to the outside money from corporations and trade associations backing establishment Republican candidates. “We knew this was going to be a tough cycle and a tough year,” he said. “You need resources you can put on the ground when you need them.”

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The Lawyer Behind the Supreme Court’s Latest Campaign Finance Decision Has a New Cause: Sarah Palin for Senate

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FEC: We Won’t Treat Tea Partiers Like Jim Crow-Era NAACP Supporters

Mother Jones

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By a 3-2 vote, the Federal Election Commission on Thursday rejected a national tea party group’s request to stop disclosing its donors under an exemption that originated with protections given to the NAACP and its members who faced violence during the Jim Crow era.

Here’s the background: The Tea Party Leadership Fund is a year-and-a-half old political outfit that has received $2.5 million in donations from some 600 contributors. The Fund makes independent expenditures and also contributes directly to candidates, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Reps. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) and Steve Gaines (R-Mont.). Earlier this year, the Fund handed the FEC 1,400 pages of what it said was evidence of “harassment, threats, and reprisals” against the group and its donors. Citing all that evidence, the group asked the FEC for an exemption so that it no longer had to disclose its donors and other vital campaign finance information.

This exemption has been granted only rarely by the FEC: The most prominent recipient is the Socialist Workers Party, which has received this exemption for several decades after showing considerable evidence of threats and harassment of their supporters. (The NAACP’s exemption was granted by the Supreme Court in 1958, which set a precedent for future exemptions.)

The decision over whether to give the Tea Party Leadership Fund the same exemption has been closely watched by campaign finance advocates and election lawyers. Some feared granting the exemption could set a precedent allowing many other political committees who felt harassed to get the same treatment, gradually eroding the nation’s disclosure laws. “If the FEC allows it, it’s a very slippery slope of this group and that group and this group all getting exemptions, too,” says one Democratic campaign finance lawyer.

Opponents of the Tea Party Leadership Fund’s request also argued that what the group considered harassment was far less severe than what the NAACP and Socialist Workers Party faced. “This tea party group comparing itself to the NAACP of old, whose membership feared for its lives and its livelihoods, would fail the laugh test if their request was not so offensive and so outrageous on its face,” Paul S. Ryan, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, said on Wednesday.

At Thursday’s meeting, the FEC’s commissioners split on the matter. Republicans Matthew Petersen and Caroline Hunter agreed with the tea party group, citing the scandal over the IRS’ targeting of tea party groups applying for tax-exempt status. The Democrats broke the other way. Chair Ellen Weintraub quoted Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s 2010 comment that “running a democracy takes a certain amount of civic courage”; tea party donors, she said, needed to show that courage. Democrat Ann Ravel, meanwhile, agreed with the Campaign Legal Center’s argument that the Tea Party Leadership Fund’s evidence of harassment paled in comparison to what the NAACP and Socialist Workers Party experienced.

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FEC: We Won’t Treat Tea Partiers Like Jim Crow-Era NAACP Supporters

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