National view: To get the money out of politics, take power away from politicians

Kudos to U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank. Despite his personal disagreement with the Supreme Court’s application of the First Amendment to strike down campaign-finance laws, Judge Frank honored precedent. Earlier this month, he ruled in favor of people challenging a Minnesota law that unconstitutionally limited campaign contributions based on the timing of when individuals contributed to political candidates (“Federal court: Minn. must lift limit on political donations,” May 21).
Although the Institute for Justice, which represented the challengers, won a court battle, it won neither the heart nor the mind of Judge Frank. His judicial integrity notwithstanding, Judge Frank’s personal belief (explicitly expressed in his ruling) that the U.S. Supreme Court direction on campaign-finance cases is damaging to the “integrity of public institutions” is no cause for celebration among people who understand campaign-finance restrictions are, in law and practice, arbitrary limits on political speech and contrary to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Minnesota, like many states and the federal government, limits the amount any one person can donate to a candidate during a campaign. In Minnesota, limits vary depending on the political office. (Ironically, the more influence an office has, the more one can contribute.) Unlike other states, however, Minnesota also has a separate, unique statute that arbitrarily can cut those limits in half.
The “special-sources” limit for a Minnesota House candidate, for example, is $12,500 in contributions of $500 to $1,000. Once the $12,500 limit is reached, all future donors may contribute up to $500 only. So if 12 individuals contribute the maximum $1,000 to a campaign, the 13th donor (and each successive donor) is limited to a maximum $500 contribution, thus halving their free speech and political participation.
Doug Seaton and Van Carlson are two Minnesotans whose campaign contributions were rejected because the candidates they supported had reached the special-sources limit. Seaton and Carlson, along with Minnesota state Rep. Linda Runbeck and candidate for the state house Scott Dutcher, each of whom were forced to return campaign contributions, have teamed with the Institute for Justice to challenge Minnesota’s special-sources limit in federal court.
The Institute for Justice lawsuit is the first opportunity for a federal court to apply the recent Supreme Court’s holding in McCutcheon v. FEC to a state campaign-finance law. Based on McCutcheon, Judge Frank held the Institute for Justice suit has a “substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their claim,” and ruled Minnesota can’t enforce the law until the case has worked its way through the judicial process.
However, despite his ruling, Judge Frank agrees with Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent in McCutcheon, viewing the decision as one that “creates a loophole” in campaign-finance law and “understates the importance of protecting the political integrity of our governmental institutions.”
Judge Frank’s and Justice Breyer’s “loophole” position reflects the fundamental flaw in the thinking of people who would “take the money out of politics” by passing or more restrictively interpreting campaign-finance laws. The problem they see is too much money flowing into political campaigns. Being makers and interpreters of the law, they try to limit the flow of money by passing and restrictively interpreting more campaign-finance laws. Fact is money flows into politics for only one reason: Government has just too many favors to sell.
Campaign-finance laws only change the way money makes its way to political candidates. Ultimately, the only way to reduce the flow of money into political campaigns is by limiting the size and scope of government power to the point where government doesn’t have such a ubiquitous and invasive presence in our lives.
Defending the right of Minnesotans like Seaton and Carlson to contribute to the political candidates of their choices is necessary but not sufficient to rein in the scope of government. If we ultimately want to solve the so-called problem of money in politics, the answer is to reduce the power of government, not freedom of speech and the political participation of the citizenry.
As Thomas Jefferson so aptly noted, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

Craig Westover of Afton, Minn., is a communications fellow with the Institute for Justice (ij.org). The institute is the nation’s only libertarian, civil-liberties, public-interest law firm. It is based in Arlington, Va.