It's only the beginning for campaign reform

What the state Legislature will do with campaign finance reform is one of the hot questions legislators are facing in the current session.

Montana has been at the forefront of campaign finance in the United States for some time now.

With the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United 2010 decision and a related decision last year, Montana was the focus of campaign finance reform. The high court’s ruling freed corporations and unions to spend unlimited sums of money on campaigns in the state. A later ruling allowed individuals to pool their funds in political action committees, or PACs.

The news on this was so big that it went nationwide and I read about it while living in Virginia.

Montana and the other states are left to deal with the fallout.

State Rep. Scott Reichner, R-Bigfork, has proposed HB229, which would increase campaign contribution limits for individuals. It would also bring state law into compliance with the Citizens United decision and remove contribution limits for corporations and political action committees.

Montana voters overwhelmingly approved a citizens initiative last November (I-166) that calls for its elected officials to support a Constitutional Amendment that would overturn Citizens United. Some 11 states have passed some kind of resolution similar to Montana’s, whether by citizens or legislatures, according to John Nichols, a writer for The Nation.

Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer promised to start a prairie fire by passing I-166.

Montana’s citizen-approved initiative was largely symbolic, however. Approving a Constitutional Amendment is, to put it blunty, hard.

Which brings us back to the current situation.

Reichner has said that third-party money is driving campaigns, calling the situation a “huge inequity” that has resulted in corporations and political committees contributing seven to eight times as much as individuals.

Reichner said he was trying to work with new Gov. Steve Bullock on campaign finance reform, but one wonders what will be accomplished?

Reichner said he agrees that less money is better than more money in politics, but with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, candidates should be able to raise more money to counter outside spending by corporations, unions and other groups.

Reichner said he’d like to level the playing field.

Bullock may not yet have decided what he supports. He did not return two phone calls from the Bigfork Eagle when asked recently about his position on campaign finance reform.

Bullock’s representative Kevin O’Brien has said that Bullock does not believe that more money in the political sphere is a good thing, according to Mike Dennison, a reporter for Montana Lee Newspapers’ state bureau.

Bullock came out recently in support of a bill — called the TRACE Act, for Transparency, Accountability and Reporting in Campaigns — that would require political committees to name their chief executive officer and the address of the committee’s principle place of business on any campaign communications. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Jim Peterson, R-Buffalo, would also make significant changes to state campaign finance laws by allowing for higher campaign contribution limits for candidates.

U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell of Helena threw out some of Montana’s contribution limits last year, but his decision was put on hold while it’s appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It could then be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which could result in our state limits being tossed.

Additionally, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case as early as this fall — McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission — that could result in individual campaign contribution limits being tossed. If the high court sides with Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama conservative activist and businessman, Buckley v. Valeo, the historic 1976 decision that limited campaign contributions, would get tossed.

Clear enough?

Democrats complained loudly about Republican donors’ profligate spending as a result of the Citizens United decision, but when it all shook out, Obama and the Democrats raised almost as much in some cases, and in other cases matched them, according to Nichols.

So all was not gloom and doom after all.

Personally, I believe that being able to spend money on a political campaign is a part of free speech, because if one doesn’t have any, one can’t compete. Yes, I believe in the First Amendment. In fact, I love the First Amendment.

But at the same time, I don’t believe a corporation is a person.

I’m afraid we haven’t heard the last of it when it comes to campaign finance reform.