Campaign Finance

We now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to pass a new law, based on countless democracy reforms passed and successfully implemented in states across the country, the For the People Act. The bill, which will go to a vote of the full House the first week in March, includes provisions that will end secret, unaccountable money in politics, help ensure every voter, regardless of their race, ethnicity, age, or ZIP code, has equal access to the ballot box, end partisan gerrymandering, and strengthen conflict of interest and ethics laws for public officials. The For the People Act, designated as H.R. 1 and S. 1 in Congress, is the most comprehensive pro-democracy bill introduced in Congress since the Watergate era. It is the bold action that the American people want and deserve. 

According to Common Cause Senior Counsel Stephen Spaulding, the implications of not getting H.R. 1 passed could be extremely serious. Spaulding, who helped write H.R. 1 while serving as Senior Elections Counsel to the Committee on House Administration, warned that the damage Republicans could inflict on democracy in the absence of federal action could be irreparable. “For democracy in general, the danger of not taking action is potentially catastrophic, given the precision and targeting and manipulation of the rules that some state legislators are doing to make it harder to vote,” he said. Spaulding explained that Republican efforts to restrict voting took off after the Supreme Court’s decision inShelby County v. Holder, which invalidated the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s requirement for states with a history of racial discrimination to submit changes in voting rules to the Justice Department for pre-clearance. But he added that establishing uniform standards for voting across all 50 states would not have a partisan tilt one way or another. Until Trump started attacking the validity of postal ballots, Republicans had made use of them in greater numbers than Democrats in many key states. “Ever since then, we know that there are elected officials at the state level who have been working tooth and nail to make it harder to vote, so this is an opportunity to really level the playing field,” he said. “I think these are basic, common-sense solutions to make voting more convenient no matter what party you’re in…. We just had the most the highest turnout election… in the middle of a global pandemic, and that’s because people took steps across the country to make voting more convenient. Now we need to lock those in.”

“Big time bait-and-switch by Donald Trump and a bunch of other politicians lower in the food chain capitalizing on that opportunity — to rip their own supporters off, really,” said Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a government watchdog group in Washington, D.C. “The donors who were defrauded by and large in November and December by team Trump — these were elderly Republican donors who …it’s just despicable to prey on that donor pool, in my opinion,” Ryan said.

The fundraising numbers signal just how potent the election fraud argument became with Trump's most loyal supporters, experts told ABC News. Paul S. Ryan, a vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a Washington-based good-government group, called the fundraising effort deceptive. "It was based entirely on fraud ... by Team Trump alleging that there were problems in the election, that Trump needed money to hire lawyers to fight and that he won the election," Ryan said. "And in my experience watchdogging money in politics closely for more than 20 years, this is unprecedented."

The events of January 6 in Washington, D.C., were shocking and appalling. We saw armed rioters, incited by President Trump, storm our center of government and loot the U.S. Capitol — which led to at least five deaths. The violent mob, spurred by conspiracy theories and lies, failed in its attempt to overturn the results of an election — the same election Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security said was, "the most secure in American history.” But this tragic attack on our Capitol should not be understood as just a reaction to the incitement of insurrection of the outgoing president. This horrific event came after years of ignoring structural weaknesses in our Republic. Our democracy was, and continues to be, undermined — and we must immediately fix it.

This is not FirstEnergy’s first bailout nor first pay-to-play scandal. Ohio needs to make it the utility’s last scandal by shining a light on dark money and adding conflict-free members to the PUCO.