The Independent View: End Citizens United PAC

A new campaign finance reform political action committee expects to be among the top five outside groups to assist campaigns this cycle.

End Citizens United PAC has raised more than $2 million from its online supporters since it formed in March and says it’s on track to raise $25 to $30 million to funnel through a yet-to-be-created independent expenditure arm.

The group is hoping to grow its ranks when it begins renting Ready for Hillary’s email list this week. That “partnership, highlights our legitimacy.”, Communications Director Richard Carbo said.

Its goal is to pass a constitutional amendment overturning the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which deregulated corporate and union spending for or against specific candidates, and the 2014 decision in McCutcheon vs. FEC, which struck down two-year aggregate limits on how much individuals can donate to candidates, parties and PACs.

And that’s where End Citizens United’s electoral involvement comes into play: Besides supporting states’ clean elections movements, such as one in Maine this summer, the group wants to help elect candidates at the congressional level who would support such an amendment and other campaign finance reforms.

So far, 325,000 people have signed the group’s online petition calling for a constitutional amendment and 950,000 people have engaged with the group in some way online.

The average contribution is about $14. A review of its Federal Election Commission filing shows that many of its donations have come from ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising site, as well as from repeat individual donors writing multiple small-dollar checks.

But advertising its candidates’ support for campaign finance reform won’t be the group’s only message this cycle. Expect End Citizens United to promote its endorsed candidates in other ways, too. “This issue is great with the base,” Carbo said of campaign finance reform. “But the number one priority is that we’re interested in electing the member.” It may take “many different messages,” Carbo added, to get that person elected.

Although Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail have expressed support for more transparency and disclosure for big-spending groups, as well as overhauling the FEC, End Citizens United is backing only Democrats.

Most of the group’s endorsements hail from seats that the Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report/Roll Call rates as either Safe Democrat or Favored Democratic. It’s also endorsing in the Wisconsin Senate race, which is rated Tossup, and Colorado’s Senate race, which is rated Leans Democrat.

Senior advisers Valerie Martin and Reed Adamson are, respectfully, veterans of Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill’s 2006 and Illinois Rep. Brad Schneider’s 2012 campaigns.

Democrats must net 30 seats to win control of the House and 5 seats to retake the Senate next year. Even if the PAC helps elect more Democrats, passing a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority of both the House and the Senate.

“With each cycle, you can bring more and more people into the fray,” Carbo said, acknowledging that passing an amendment to overturn Citizens United “is not going to be done overnight.” “While our end goal is to overturn Citizens United, there are several things we can do along the way,” Carbo said, pointing to smaller reforms that would “bring more accountability and transparency.” But Democrats who have introduced public financing legislation this year have acknowledged that that kind of reform isn’t likely to move forward in the 114th Congress.

At the presidential level, the group’s use of Ready for Hillary’s contact list does not imply an endorsement of Clinton.

And what about Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who founded Mayday PAC in 2014 and announced on Tuesday that he’s exploring a referendum candidacy for president?

“We are looking to do anything and everything we can to highlight this issue, and if that’s what he feels he needs to do to highlight the issue, that’s great,” Carbo said.

UPDATE
Rick Hasen, a campaign finance regulation expert and professor of law and political science at UC-Irvine School of Law, put it in more stark terms. “Let’s say the group raised $100 million — the chances that even that amount of money to get a constitutional amendment passed by electing some sympathetic members of Congress is a pipe dream.” He said a greater likelihood of getting the law changed is confirming a new Supreme Court justice — when the time comes — who could shift the balance of the court.

But, Hasen argued, groups like End Citizens United do serve a purpose in “continuing with the public awareness of the Supreme Court’s decision and it keeps political pressure on both the Supreme Court and other political actors to not make things worse.”