Clinton Loans and the $250,000 Limit on Repayment

Whenever a mainstream media outlet mentions a “little-known provision” of campaign finance laws, it is a must-read article:

Clinton loaned her struggling campaign $11 million in recent months. A little-known provision of a 2002 campaign- finance law cosponsored by McCain prevents candidates who drop out of the race from raising money after the nominating conventions to repay themselves for personal loans.

I suspect that there is not much “little-known” about the details of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 at this point, but it makes for an interesting angle in the story.

State of Play in Vermont

Does Vermont have a campaign finance law?  It’s not a new question to those who have followed the law there and is making news because of comments by a high-ranking official.

The top Democrat in the Vermont Senate is facing criticism for comments he made this week that Gov. Jim Douglas’ vetoes of campaign finance bills two years in a row left Vermont without any campaign finance law.

Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin was responding Wednesday to comments from Jason Gibbs, spokesman for Gov. Jim Douglas. Gibbs had charged that lawmakers had decided not to hold a special session to try to override any gubernatorial vetoes to leave House Speaker Gaye Symington free to solicit lobbyists for contributions to support her still unannounced gubernatorial campaign.

Vermont law prohibits lawmakers from soliciting or accepting gifts from lobbyists during a legislative session. If lawmakers, who finished their business for the year May 3, had decided to return as originally planned for the veto session June 26, the ban on lobbyists’ gifts would have remained in effect until that date.

In an Associated Press interview on Wednesday, Shumlin, D-Windham, replied to Gibbs’ remarks by pointing to the fact that Douglas had vetoed legislation in 2007 and again this year that would have tightened the limits on contributions to political campaigns. He said three times in the interview that Vermont currently has no law controlling campaign contributions, and that Symington could not have been motivated to forgo the veto session by that law.

“Why would we do anything based around a campaign finance law that doesn’t exist?” Shumlin asked.

Leake and Speechnow.org

Steve Hoersting (Center for Competitive Politics) has written an important article on the group’s blog dealing with “major purpose” tests.

The election bar and courts need to close the loop on a widely held concept: “Major purpose,” or more precisely, the lack of an electoral one, is an added shield against registration for organizations that show some potential for corruption.  “Major purpose” is not a sword, and is not itself a form of corruption.  Therefore, in the absence of any form of corruption recognized by the Supreme Court, an inquiry into an organization’s “major purpose” is immaterial, and damaging.