Today, Campaign Legal Center’s (CLC) released a new Race in Politics Catalog, a collection of political communications, campaign materials and comments that make racial appeals to voters. Compiled over the 2017-2018 election cycle, the Catalog gathers – in one place for the first time – many different types of race-based appeals from political campaigns across the country.

After Barack Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008, some suggested that it was the beginning of a new, post-racial age of American politics. The racism and bias that had characterized so much of the nation’s political discourse, they argued, was now in the past. But a look into the political campaigns of recent years makes abundantly clear the pernicious and continuing role of racism in the United States.

Campaigns across the country have consistently made appeals – both explicitly and implicitly – to voters on the basis of race. Many campaigns continue to employ racist stereotypes or exclusionary rhetoric to attack their opponents and generate support for themselves. These tactics are startlingly common, and their impact immense.

These messages sow division, cultivate harmful stereotypes, and disempower marginalized communities, and often, messages like these are closely linked to efforts at voter suppression.

Individual racist ads or comments are often dismissed as fringe outliers. By compiling these ads, CLC hopes to stimulate and foster a discussion about the ways political candidates or their surrogates continue to use race to sow division, cultivate harmful stereotypes, and disempower minority communities. We hope this catalog will inform our ongoing and necessary debate about race in our politics.

U.S. Representatives Kathleen Rice (D-NY), Mike Gallagher (R-WI), and Derek Kilmer (D-WA) re-introduced The Political Accountability and Transparency Act (PATA), H.R. 679, a bipartisan bill to addresses the abuses of campaign finance law that have become increasingly common in federal elections. Campaign Legal Center (CLC) advised the House offices on language for the bill.

CLC’s new issue brief describes how PATA would attend to pressing democracy issues like single-candidate super PACs and digital disclosure loopholes.

“Strengthening the law requiring independence of candidates from outside groups is critical to loosening the influence that megadonors who fund super PACs hold over candidates and officeholders,” said Trevor Potter, President of the Campaign Legal Center, and a former Republican Chairman of the Federal Election Commission. “Similarly, increasing political spending transparency and stopping politicians from using leadership PACs as slush funds are broadly popular bipartisan reforms. Voters have a right to know who is bankrolling campaign ads. And it would seem obvious that lawmakers shouldn’t be using donors’ PAC money to fund golf memberships, trips to five-star resorts, and Disney World vacations.”

Commerce Dept. should acknowledge their mistake and reverse course to ensure that every person in the country is counted

NEW YORK – Today, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled to remove the controversial citizenship question from the 2020 Census. U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman has ordered the administration discontinue plans to include the question. Given the timely nature of the case, any appeal may end up before the Supreme Court this term. The Court is currently scheduled to hear a procedural issue related to the case in February. 

“While the fight is not over, this decision is a sigh of relief for people in the country that could have been adversely affected by the lack of representation caused by being undercounted in the Census,” said Paul Smith, vice president of the Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “Commerce should acknowledge their mistake and reverse course to ensure that every person in the country is counted. The quality of the Census dictates the redrawing of district lines to ensure representation of all communities. That’s what’s at stake.”

CLC has actively opposed the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. Read the letters CLC signed that were sent to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross expressing concern about the citizenship question and learn about ongoing litigation over this matter by visiting our action page.

WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear arguments in a challenge to Montana’s base contribution limits, allowing a Ninth Circuit Court decision to stand. The Ninth Circuit ruled in October 2017 that the law is constitutional. Base contribution limits are a state’s cap on the amount of money individuals, political action committees and political parties are permitted to contribute to candidates for state elective office. Montana voters originally approved the contribution limits by ballot initiative back in 1994.

“Declining to hear this case protects the viability of contribution limits nationwide as a tool for state lawmakers to combat pay-to-play politics,” said Paul Smith, vice president at Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “The prospect that large, unlimited contributions could be given to candidates as a quid pro quo for political favors should be self-evident. For that reason, the courts have long recognized the constitutionality of campaign contribution limits, and today they represent one of the few remaining checks on actual and perceived corruption in the campaign process. Although the courts have created a challenging environment for campaign finance laws nationally, the Ninth Circuit decision was well-reasoned and consistent with forty years of precedent, and the Supreme Court rightly declined to intervene.”

This lawsuit is part of a continuing legal strategy to undermine all campaign finance laws, which CLC has been fighting on the federal, state and local level. CLC filed a brief with the Ninth Circuit in October 2016 urging reversal of the lower court’s decision, and had previously filed a brief in 2014 when the case was first up on appeal.

Learn more about the case Lair v. Motl.