ACLU on wrong side of history in Randall v. Sorrell

I am very angry at the American Civil Liberties Union. No, I’m more than angry, I’ve really, really pissed off.

Tuesday, in a 6-3 decision the United States Supreme Court, no longer in the clutches of “liberal” activists, overturned Vermont’s nine-year-old law limiting campaign contributions. In so doing the Roberts court upheld the Burger Court’s 1976 decision, Buckley v. Valeo, equating campaign contributions, primarily by wealthy individuals, with the First Amendment right of free speech.

On the face of it, the saying that money is equal to freedom of speech, as protected by our First Amendment, is absurd. Yet this is the argument the ACLU presented before the non-activist Roberts Court.

In briefs filed with the Court, the ACLU argued that the extreme limits of Act 64 prevent voters from hearing from the candidates themselves, and ultimately magnifies the importance of so-called special interest spending, further undermining the state's asserted interest in limiting the influence of such groups on the electoral process. In addition, the Act blurs the line between discussions of issues by candidates, particularly incumbents, and election speech.

"The state of Vermont would have us believe Act 64 is only about money and not about speech, when in fact the opposite is true," said ACLU senior staff attorney Mark Lopez, who is co-counsel in today's case. "A candidate who has reached the spending limit cannot even drive to the village green to deliver a political speech without violating the law, because mileage counts as an expenditure under this law."
ACLU press release 06//28/06

Said an ACLU lawyer:

"We're obviously very, very pleased. It's a landmark case for freedom of speech," said Peter Langrock, a Middlebury lawyer who represented the American Civil Liberties Union in the case.

"This bill (Vermont’s Act 64) used a sledgehammer to fix a bent nail," Langrock said.

He noted that the court agreed that the law's contribution limits would reduce the voice of political parties to a "whisper."

Vermont Republican Party Chairman Jim Barnett, whose organization also opposed the law, praised the decision as not only a victory for free speech but also "a blow to incumbent politicians."
Burlington Free Press

One fallacy of logic the ACLU presented in its argument is the long held American belief that the smaller the political unit, the less the possibility of corruption.

[ACLU cooperating attorney, Mitchell L.] Pearl noted that Vermont is a small state where constituents tend to know their elected officials personally. "Election corruption isn't a significant problem in Vermont," he said, adding that Vermont ranked 49th in spending in gubernatorial elections across the country. "Act 64 is causing more harm than good to the candidates and people of Vermont."
op.cit.

Obviously no one from the ACLU national office has paid any attention to the Central Iowa Employment & Training Consortium (CIETC) scandal. Here is a perfect example of a relatively small political unit descending into, for the polity as a whole, a state of major corruption.

That small polities are immune to corruption just because everyone knows everyone else is a fantasy, a myth. The opportunities for political corruption, from my experience, tend to increase in small polities precisely because everyone knows everyone else. There is less likelihood of outside oversight and cover-ups, intentional or otherwise, occur. What incentive would cousin Diane, who works for the county recorders office, have to snitch to the county board of supervisors that cousin Sue is embezzling small amounts from the county treasurer’s office, for a swimming pool that they can both enjoy?

So why would anyone think that a small, rural state like Vermont be any less politically corrupt that its southern neighbor New York? Just look at the recent Democratic gubernatorial primary here in Iowa, a state similar to Vermont. The primary qualification for political office these days is not whether a candidate has new ideas or stances on the issues, but is she an effective fundraiser. Even iconoclastic Texas gubernatorial candidate, Kinky Friedman boosts of his fundraising abilities.

But now with the republic in its two hundred seventeenth year, our philosopher kings are, as they fashioned themselves from the first, the wealthiest among us. By that measuring stick Bill Gates should be president for life. And this, seemingly, is the political myth the mover-and-shakers of the ACLU hold dear.

In a 1999 PBS interview with Gwen Ifill, ACLU counsel Joel Gora, who argued before the Supreme Court in the landmark Buckley v. Valeo case, said:

" I'm looking at protecting the different voices. When the ACLU first got involved in these issues, it was because individual citizens were trying to use their resources to run ads in the newspaper and the government tried to stop them saying they were an illegal campaign committee. We got involved in representing Senator Gene McCarthy, a political hero, for having challenged Lyndon Johnson. How did he do so? He got a small number of wealthy contributors who agreed with his anti-war message to fund his campaign(emphasis added). And he took the message to the people and defeated a sitting President. That's why I'm interested in having people use their funds or their contributor's funds to get their message out.

He continues: “So that means if we take John's [ John Bonzifaz] cap and continue to limit contributions, we're going to have a perpetuation of the same failed system that we have now. No limits on expenditures, which is critical under the First Amendment; and then we make it harder for the new voices, the political newcomers, to try to get their message out and that's wrong.”

And all these years I was under the illusion that Eugene McCarthy’s meteoric rise in the political stratosphere of 1968 was due to the so-called “children’s crusade,”-- a dedicated cadres of college age men and women who shed their jeans and sheared their locks to be “Clean with Gene”—and not a few richer than Croesus donors who, more than likely, were playing both sides of the political street (“Here you go, Senator McCarthy, a nice donation of $10,000 to get out your anti-war message.” Which really meant: “My Waldo’s nearing draft age now. Gotta call my broker and see how my shares of General Dynamics are doing. With Nixon in they’ll be worth real money.”)

And how, with media concentration can a lone individual get his message out to the public?

The world’s oldest democracy is sliding into plutocracy. Not only that, it is mutating into an aristocracy. The proof is in Iowa politics itself. Young Chester Culver is the youngest son and political heir of erstwhile US Senator John Culver; former Governor Terry Branstad’s wastrel son, Eric, is an
apparatchik of the Iowa Republican Party. I need not mention the national political dynasties of the Bushes, Rockefellers, or Kennedys. The only way to keep our system of representative-democratic governance from ossifying into a hereditary hierarchy is to level the economic aspect of the political playing field. Let ideas and issues truly be the decider.