This month’s Supreme Court ruling on the Citizens United case allowing corporations and unions broad freedom to intervene in political campaigns should concern anyone interested in participatory democracy and fair elections.
That is especially true here in Connecticut, where a clean elections program that is a national model is designed to keep the influence of special interests out of our elections.
In a 5-4 decision, the court eliminated the ban against direct corporate spending on political campaigns. While corporations still cannot make donations to candidates, under the court’s ruling they now can use funds from the corporate treasury to pay for advertising or other campaign expenses to help elect or defeat candidates.
Limits on corporate political spending have been part of U.S. law since 1907, when Congress banned direct corporate donations to candidates.
In 1947, Congress prohibited corporations from making independent expenditures to support or defeat a political candidate. The principle that corporations should and could be limited in their campaign expenditures has been affirmed multiple times since and was not even challenged by the parties in Citizens United.
Overreaching, the court took it upon itself to ask the parties to consider the issue.
There is some good news in what the court did not do. It did not strike down laws requiring disclosure of expenditures of more than $10,000 per year and requiring disclaimers on televised communications. The court also made clear that corporations and unions may engage only in independent expenditures — expenditures that have not been coordinated with the candidate.
But we must not be fooled into thinking that this ruling is anything but a threat to the substantial progress we have made in ridding our elections of the influence of special interests. Remember, corporations do not have a vote. Every single employee and shareholder of even the largest corporation has the same voice that you and I do in our democracy. With this ruling, they now have a much larger and more powerful voice.
Under the court’s rationale, individuals have the same right to speech as the wealthiest corporation. There is no way that one person’s ideas can compete when corporate speech and corporate dollars can overwhelm political discourse. This court decision creates uneven rules, effectively muzzling millions of citizens in favor of those few who have millions to spend on influencing policies.
Going forward, we will encourage the Congress and President Obama to seek fixes for the problems this ruling creates. We may be able to take these restrictions on spending by corporations and unions that the court left intact and strengthen them to make it less likely that these entities, or any other deep-pocket spender, will be able to influence our elections in an unfair and unbalanced manner. We also should consider state remedies that are worthwhile.
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Christopher G. Donovan (D-Meriden) is speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives.
