Tempe Town Lake

Both rulings are good ruling. The problem isn't that corporations have free speech and can give as much money as they want to political candidates. The problem is that elected officials routinely trade money for votes.

Unions and corporations will start trading money for votes. But that is because crooked elected officials routinely take the money in exchange for votes, something that is illegal.

Source

Courts throw curve at Arizona elections

Rulings could affect outcomes

by Alia Beard Rau, Edythe Jensen and Gary Nelson

- Jan. 25, 2010 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

It's been a tough week for Arizona's election process.

A U.S. District Court judge and the U.S. Supreme Court issued separate decisions that different campaign-finance rules violate the First Amendment.

Candidates and legal experts are still trying to untangle the details, and additional legal or legislative decisions could change things again, but all agree the implications are enormous. "I think we have no idea how profound ultimately the impact of this may be," said polling expert Michael O'Neil of Tempe-based O'Neil Associates.

On Wednesday, a U.S. District Court judge ruled it was unconstitutional for Clean Elections candidates to get additional public money when their opponents exceed a certain amount. The state must stop the practice in the next week, unless attorneys for the Clean Elections Commission can convince the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to delay the cessation of matching funds or overturn the ruling. The commission filed its appeal Friday.

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal law that restricted companies and labor unions from spending money to influence elections through methods such as running TV ads for or against a candidate. They still cannot give money directly to candidates. Because the ruling deemed the law a violation of the First Amendment, it also must be applied to state and local races.

O'Neil argued the Supreme Court ruling makes the Clean Elections lawsuit moot. "The idea of public financing was to pre-empt candidates from being bought and sold," he said. "If that can't be prohibited, the whole logic of public financing goes away."

He called the Supreme Court decision "potentially staggering."

"It creates the possibility that a lobbyist for a company can not only ask for something of an elected official, he can threaten a direct assault against their re-election," he said.

Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman, a lawyer who has litigated First Amendment cases, said he isn't troubled by the ruling. "I have always viewed that the best antidote to speech is more speech, and the best antidote to government operations and political activity is more light," Hallman said.

Faced with the possibility of, say, Tempe-based US Airways trying to influence a mayoral or council election, Hallman said he's not sure how that would differ from a corporate-owned newspaper trying to do the same thing. "Every press operation in this country's history has had a point of view that it expresses in its endorsements and its placement of news and its editorials," he said.

Faced with a flood of campaign messages - some factual, some perhaps not - voters and candidates need full disclosure of who is behind those messages, Hallman said. "The best government can do is establish the most efficient rules and regulations and stop trying to pick winners and losers," he said.

Chris Stage, a Chandler neighborhood activist, called the Supreme Court decision disappointing. "An individual doesn't have access to resources like a corporation does," she said. "Study after study shows that money has a corrupting influence; that's why the rules came into being in the first place. Campaign-finance limits didn't prevent corporations from having their say, they just leveled the playing field."

State Rep. Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, is running for re-election this year. He said the rulings could allow corporations and unions to decide some of the state's more competitive legislative districts. He said he hopes companies and unions in Arizona choose to spend their money on finding people jobs instead of "playing political games."

Jim Haynes, president of the Behavior Research Center, a Phoenix-based polling and marketing firm, said unions may be more likely than businesses to pour money into local elections. "The common assumption is that this (ruling) is going to work in favor of business-oriented candidates in Arizona, where the theory is unions aren't as strong as in other parts of the country," Haynes said.

But he said Arizona's unions "have ties to national groups, and I think they can exploit those ties way better than the business community can," pulling money into local campaigns more quickly and efficiently than a corporation might.

Stacey Dillon, spokeswoman for the Arizona Police Association, said she expects the ruling will make it easier for police and fire unions to openly support candidates and make more of a difference in election outcomes.

John Wright, president of the Arizona Education Association, said he does not anticipate his organization will change campaign-contribution practices even though it appears the ruling would allow them to. "The AEA has a policy of not spending members' dues dollars on political candidates and campaigns," Wright said. "That is funded through voluntary donations to political action committees."

Haynes acknowledged a company might try to sway a local election if it has a particular development on the table in the community. But he said, "I don't see in a city the size of Phoenix . . . a company coming forward and putting a million bucks in the campaign to get Candidate A elected as opposed to Candidate B."

Phoenix campaign-finance attorney Janna Day with Fennemore Craig said she thinks it may be the municipal, not the state races, where corporations and labor unions focus their efforts. "In most cities, there's often a closer tie to large employers or labor unions," she said. "That's where they're making decisions about local employment and headquarters."

She said the Supreme Court ruling benefits Arizona voters, who will not have to rely just on what the candidates are saying. "I think voters are smart enough to evaluate the information and the sources it is received from and make a more informed decision."