Respectable Money at Work

For Immediate Release

February 4, 2002

Contact: Amanda Cooper, 212.998.6282

Need for Campaign Finance Reform More Urgent Than Ever, According to New Study by the Brennan Center for Justice

Center Releases Buying Time 2000: Television Advertising in the 2000 Federal Elections

As Congress prepares to return to the debate over campaign finance reform, new research from the Brennan Center shows again that the current system is urgently in need of repair. Brennan Center research has been utilized heavily in earlier debates, and the revelations in Buying Time 2000 promise to figure prominently in the upcoming House deliberations over the Shays-Meehan bill.

Buying Time 2000 is the second in the Brennan Center's series of reports on campaign advertising on television. Buying Time 2000 advances beyond an earlier study of the 1998 congressional elections by making use of a new database of soft money expenditures by the national and state party committees. The study reports on data compiled regarding 3,327 unique political ads that aired a total of 940,755 times in approximately 300 different races. Key findings include:

* Spending by groups on sham issue ads in congressional races increased from $10 million to $32 million from 1998 to 2000.
* The 2000 presidential election was the first in history in which the major parties spent more on television ads than the candidates themselves.
* All of the ads paid for by major political parties in 2000 were aimed at electing or defeating specific candidates.

"Our study shows that the loopholes have swallowed the law," says Brennan Center President Josh Rosenkranz. "The explosion of campaign advertising paid for by party soft money and independent groups proves that the limits that supposedly exist to curb the influence of corporations and rich individuals on our elections are gone. And the abuses just keep getting worse."

The study shows that the huge soft money contributions given to parties by corporations, unions, and rich individuals are used primarily to support the election of individual candidates. "We have laws on the books that prohibit corporations and unions from contributing directly to candidates," explains Mr. Rosenkranz. "By using soft money to fund sham issue ads, the parties are being used as gigantic money-laundering operations."

Beyond showing the dire need for comprehensive campaign finance reform, Buying Time 2000 also shows that the two major criticisms of the current reform proposal, one from the left and the other from the right, hold no water.

By analyzing soft money spending, report authors Craig Holman, Ph.D. and Luke McLoughlin are able to answer campaign finance reform critic's contention that party soft money is needed for get-out-the-vote and voter mobilization activities. In fact, only 8.5 cents of every dollar goes to these pursuits, while almost 40 cents of every dollar goes to media buys to support or defeat candidates.

"I myself was surprised by that 8.5% figure," says Dr. Holman. "As a political scientist, I had always supported the theory that the main purposes of parties were voter mobilization activities such as registration drives, canvassing and other grassroots activities. Now our study shows that only a small fraction of party resources are allocated to this kind of activity, and the largest portion of their money goes to advertising."

Conservative critics of reform claim that a curb on issue advertising, specifically the Snowe-Jeffords amendment to the McCain-Feingold bill, would stifle true issue advocacy. However the study found that if the Snowe-Jeffords test were applied to group advertising done in the 2000 election, only .6% of ads captured by the test would have been genuine issue ads. Use of the Snowe-Jeffords standard assures that genuine issue advocacy would escape regulation almost entirely, and that sham issue ads would require disclosure and contribution limits like all other electioneering.

Professor Kenneth Goldstein of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, created the main database analyzed in Buying Time 2000 and has worked in partnership with the Brennan Center since the inception of this project.

The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law develops and implements a nonpartisan agenda of scholarship, public education, and legal action that promotes equality and human dignity, while safeguarding fundamental freedoms.

On February 18, 2004, the lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal addressed the recent reclassification of the Pew Charitable Trusts from a "private foundation" to a "public charity." Private foundations and public charities are both tax exempt Section 501(c)(3) organizations, but private foundations are subject to tighter restrictions. For example, a private foundation generally cannot lobby, but public charities can do so within limits. Over the years, the Wall Street Journal has been critical of older private foundations for not honoring the intentions of the donors who established them. For example, the Pew Trusts were established between 1948 and 1979 by conservative free-market thinkers, yet new generations of board members have caused the Trusts to support liberal causes that would be anathema to the founders. The February 18th editorial suggests that the reclassification is another example of this phenomenon, stating that the switch was made in part to allow the Pew Trusts to lobby for "causes" that the founders would never have supported. The Pew Trusts web page states that the new structure will help the Trusts advance "policy solutions on important issues facing the American public." This story has nothing to do with political ideology, and everything to do with one of the most fundamental principles of charitable organization law – fidelity to donor intent. In light of developments like this, our advice to concerned donors is to articulate their intentions very clearly and, where appropriate, designate an outside person or entity as someone with legal standing to commence litigation to prevent future governing boards from disregarding the donor's desires.

In practice, the social reformers at the helm of the Pew Charitable Trusts use these media entities to run public opinion polling; to indoctrinate young reporters in “reporting techniques” that are consistent with Pew’s social goals; and to “promote” (read: subsidize) actual reporting and story preparation that meets Pew’s definition of “civic journalism.” Civic journalism, by the way, is defined as reporting that “mobilizes Americans” behind issues that Pew considers important.

Among the most unbelievable “projects” of the Tides Center is something called the Institute for Global Communications (www.igc.org). IGC is a clearinghouse for Leftist propagandists of all stripes, including living-wage advocates, anti-war protesters, slave-reparations hucksters, and a wide variety of extreme environmentalists. In February 2002 Orange County Register columnist Steven Greenhut called it “a network of the loony left” that “has to be seen to be believed… One alert posted in an IGC member conference calls for financial support for the Earth Liberation Front… Another message warns readers against cooperating with the FBI."