More about coordination
Citizens United wrongly assumed that current coordination laws were sufficient and were being enforced.
Writing for the majority in Citizens United, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy asserted: “We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” because “by definition, an independent expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate that is not coordinated with a candidate.”
Kennedy’s conclusion relied on the assumption that our current coordination laws were working and were being enforced — that any spending unleashed by the decision would be wholly independent of candidates. Unfortunately, Kennedy’s assumption was incorrect. Candidates and outside groups have found creative ways to skirt the law, and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is failing to enforce it.
Watch former FEC Chairman Trevor Potter explain coordination rules to comedians Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart on The Colbert Report
Citizens United led to an explosion of outside spending.
Since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010, outside groups have spent more than $4.4 billion, according to the Center for Responsive Politics — that’s about one of every six dollars that has been spent in federal elections.
With every election cycle since Citizens United, the role of outside groups has been increasingly felt, with super PACs and dark money groups outspending the candidates themselves in a record number of races in the 2018 midterm election, as Issue One previously noted.
How does the FEC define coordination?
The FEC defines coordinated spending as expenditures that are “made in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, a candidate’s authorized committee, or their agents, or a political party committee or its agents.”
If spending is coordinated between a candidate and a big-money outside group, that is tantamount to the candidate accepting illegal campaign contributions because super PACs and dark money groups can accept unlimited amounts of money from individuals, labor unions, and corporations.
Has the FEC ever punished anyone for illegal coordination?
The FEC has not punished anyone for illegal coordination since Citizens United. Instead, the agency has frequently deadlocked on complaints against candidates and groups that appear to be violating coordination rules — with one bloc of commissioners raising concerns about serious violations and another bloc taking a hands-off approach to the enforcement of rules that are on the books.
Has anyone ever been criminally punished for illegal coordination?
To date, just one political operative has been punished by the Justice Department for running afoul of coordination rules. Tyler Harber — who managed a Republican candidate’s congressional campaign in Virginia in 2012 while simultaneously running a super PAC to support that candidate — served two years in prison after pleading guilty to violating anti-coordination laws.
