Campaign Finance

"At this point it's kind of comparing apples to oranges." Aaron Scherb of the public interest group Common Cause says Trump pretty much has the Republican field to himself. "He might face one or two primary challengers but for the most part he has the full Republican Party fundraising apparatus behind him."

“If a candidate has pledged not to take corporate PAC funds, I would expect that candidate to likewise forego trade association PAC funds because the money’s coming from the same place: corporate stockholders, executives and administrative personnel,” said Paul S. Ryan, the vice president of Common Cause, which opposes corporate money in politics. “A candidate can cite a technical distinction between corporate and trade association PACs in an effort to wiggle out of the pledge, but there’s no principled distinction between the two.”

One Sunday morning in February of last year, Paul S. Ryan, an attorney at Common Cause, a grassroots organization that works to uphold democratic principles, got up early, as he regularly does, and read through the latest news. When he came to a story in the New York Times he had been following, he drank some coffee, ate breakfast with his wife and young son, and went to work.Ryan, who is Common Cause’s vice president of policy and litigation, does not regularly work on weekends. But the Times story had new details in an evolving scandal in which the company that owns the National Enquirer had paid $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to buy the rights to a story about her affair with Donald Trump before he became president.

The “For the People Act” offers common sense solutions to problems Americans are demanding that their elected officials solve. These pro-democracy reforms are tested and proven to be effective on the state and local level where citizens, tired of waiting for Washington to act, worked to enact these reforms. Citizen action has moved elected officials in many states and municipalities and citizens have also taken matters into their own hands and passed ballot initiatives. As we outlined in our Democracy on the Ballot report, more than 90% of the pro-democracy reform initiatives passed in each of the last two cycles.

Today’s District Court ruling is disappointing as it will embolden to scam PACs to trade on the names of candidates to raise money for their own ends from unknowing citizens. The core requirements of the ban though are in the statute itself and are still enforceable. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) can and should still be enforcing the ban—and opening a rulemaking to establish new disclaimer requirements for non-candidate websites that use a candidate’s name in the URL. The court itself cited such new disclaimer requirements as an appropriate means of protecting donors from being preyed upon by scam PACs.

Aaron Scherb, the legislative director of watchdog organization Common Cause, noted that conservative religious organizations have previously donated large amounts to groups that further their political interests. "The Religious Right and certain conservative religious groups have significant resources at their disposable. As we detailed in a 2015 report, they often flex their political muscle to further enhance their ability to spend big money in politics to drown out the voices of dissenting views," he told Newsweek.