In Praise of Montana and Vermont

Money wins elections.  Whether it be a scholarly article by academics or an empirical analysis of the 2010 elections by the Wall Street Journal , the general rule is that the more money a candidate spends,  the better is that candidate's chance of winning.  Quite a few years ago, I read that something like 80% of the elections were won by the candidate that spent the most money.  Nothing much seems to have changed in the intervening decades.  The Wall Street Journal analysis of 2010 campaign spending shows that Republican groups prevailed in nearly 75% of the House races in which they significantly out-spent Democratic organizations. 

True, it doesn't happen every time.  Just ask Meg Whitman.  She lost to Jerry Brown in the California gubernatorial contest after spending $145 million of her own money.  Her campaign manager was quoted as saying of this very blue state "you can't change Democrats into Republicans". 

But money affects elections often enough to make the Citizens United ruling a threat to our democracy.  SCOTUS'  Citizens United decision, a grossly bizarre interpretation of free speech and personhood, allows unlimited direct corporate funding to candidates' campaigns.    Now here's the kicker... the Center for Responsive Politics estimates that 72% of the political advertisement spending in the 2010 elections would have been prohibited before Citizens United.  You remember the 2010 elections - those were the ones that swept those zany Tea Party Republicans into control of the House of Representatives and made a significant dent in the Senate Democratic majority.  

And it gets worse...on February 17, the Supreme Court of the United States blocked a Montana Supreme Court ruling that had upheld that state's century old limit on corporate campaign spending.  As reported in Bloomberg Business Week, "The high court yesterday put the Montana law on hold until it announces whether it will review the measure, which is being challenged by two nonprofit corporations and a family-owned business."  In a ray of light, the eminently reasonable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, writing for herself and Justice Stephen Breyer, said that the appeal in the Montana case “will give the court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway.” 

The care2 political blog provided additonal details of Justice Ginsburg's opinion: ”Montana’s experience, and experience elsewhere since this court’s decision” in Citizens United “make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations ‘do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. A petition for certiorari will give the court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway.”

One other ray of light is the state of Vermont.  As reported in AlterNet, on the one-year anniversary of Citizens United, "state senator Virginia Lyons ...presented an anti-corporate personhood resolution for passage in the Vermont legislature. The resolution, the first of its kind, proposes 'an amendment to the United States Constitution ... which provides that corporations are not persons under the laws of the United States.'  Polls show that three-quarters of Americans oppose the Citizens United ruling.  If a constitutional amendment is eventually enacted, Vermont's action may be remembered as the first small step on the path to reform.