A useful article on campaign spending for 2010 House races by Michael Luo and Griff Palmer begins by noting that in contested races Democrats have actually outraised and outspent their Republican opponents. This is not, however, the whole story:
Republican-leaning third-party groups, however, many of them financed by large, unrestricted donations that are not publicly disclosed, have swarmed into the breach, pouring more than $60 million into competitive races since July, about 80 percent more than the Democratic-leaning groups have reported spending.
One specific example cited by the article is NY-20, in which the GOP's Chris Gibson seems to be ahead of incumbent Dem Scott Murphy. As an incumbent, Murphy has had a huge fundraising advantage over Gibson -- over $1 million -- but Gibson has largely neutralized this with a $500,000 of third-party spending on his behalf.
If third-party spending can in some cases neutralize some of the advantages of incumbency, isn't this a good thing? Well, my problem continues to be that this third-party spending is secret and undisclosed. A reasonable case can be made that nearly unrestricted spending by third parties is required by the First Amendment, but for this spending to be anonymous, it violates the democratic transparency that is required for such a set of rules to be even remotely defensible. The asymmetry between one side's supporters being mostly public and another side's being mostly private (with the public having no idea what kind of groups the candidate might owe favors to after an election) is unacceptable.
It's important to note that this new lack of transparency is a direct result of Citizens United, but is not required by the decision -- only Clarence Thomas suggested that disclosure requirements would be unconstitutional. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans have filibustered the DISCLOSE Act, which has strong majority support. With Republicans poised to make gains in the Senate, we can regrettably expect them to keep putting the interests of their corporate donors above democratic principles.
--Scott Lemieux
