The effect of corporate cash on the 2010 elections
by Steve Bickerstaff
Published: Oct. 13Steve Bickerstaff is adjunct professor in the university’s School of Law and an expert in constitutional law, regulating the use of money in politics, local government law, election law, voting rights, public policy litigation and telecommunications regulation. He is the author of “Lines in the Sand” (2007) about the controversial 2003 congressional redistricting in Texas and co-author of “International Election Principles” (2009). Previously, Bickerstaff served as Parliamentarian of the Texas Senate and special assistant Texas Attorney General before founding Bickerstaff & Heath, one of the premier election law firms in the country.
The upcoming elections are the first time that corporate funds can be legally used to expressly advocate the election or defeat of specific candidates.
Earlier this year, a five-judge majority of the United States Supreme Court held that corporations have the same right as natural citizens to spend money to expressly advocate the election or defeat of political candidates. In order to rule in this manner, this majority found it necessary to take the extraordinary steps of overruling precedent, disregarding the issues developed in the courts below, ignoring the requests of all of the parties to the litigation (no party asked that the ban on corporate campaign expenditures be declared unconstitutional) and conducting a special hearing on the validity of the federal ban. This majority of the Court could easily have given the appellants the relief that they requested without insisting on such a hearing or ruling, or could easily have fashioned relief in 2010 that allowed Congress an ample opportunity to act.
Instead, the Court acted in a manner that dramatically changed the campaign finance rules in time for the 2010 election cycle. Congressional efforts to mitigate the effect of the majority’s decision were easily blocked by Republicans in the U.S. Senate. As a result, the election system has been immediately and widely opened to large amounts of corporate cash that can be raised and used while leaving the corporations anonymous. The 2010 elections will show the effects of this phenomenon.
