Supreme Court transforms campaign finance rules, lifting limits on party spending

Amna Nawaz:

For more on the court's 6-3 decision to lift limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with its candidates, we're joined by Rick Hasen. He's a professor of law and political science at UCLA.

Rick, welcome back to the "News Hour." Thanks for joining us.

Rick Hasen:

It's good to be with you.

Amna Nawaz:

So Republicans were arguing the limits on these coordinated party expenditures amounted to limits on free speech. What's your reaction to this Supreme Court ruling of lifting those limits and along ideological lines?

Rick Hasen:

Well, this is more of the same. We have had the Supreme Court since the 2010 Citizens United case rule that campaign finance law after campaign finance law is unconstitutional.

Now, some of their earlier rulings, like the ones in Citizens United, helped to create super PACs which empowered outside groups. But the limits on political parties, they had -- the Supreme Court in its deregulatory phase hadn't really tackled.

And so what happened today is, the court is giving political parties a leg up, so now they will be able to compete for larger dollars with those super PACs and can work more directly with candidates. And the majority says this is going to be good for democracy because strong political parties are good for democracy.

Amna Nawaz:

I want to ask you more about the impact too, but in terms of who it may benefit, I want to remind folks this case is born of the then-Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance's campaign, who sued back in 2022 to challenge the limits. Republicans backed the case. We know the Trump administration when it came to power supported it.

Does this ruling end up benefiting Republicans more than Democrats?

Rick Hasen:

In the short term, the ruling probably benefits Republicans more than Democrats, simply because the Republican Party, the party operators like the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which was one of the plaintiffs in this case, they have had an easier time raising money this election cycle than their Democratic counterparts.

So they have got a Head Start, even if people start giving more to the Democratic Party. In the longer term, I think we're going to see more parity between the parties. So by the time we get to 2028, some of that super PAC money, certainly not all of it, but some of that super PAC money that was going to outside group supporting candidates will now flow through parties, and that will give candidates more control over the message and the communications that come from their campaigns.

Amna Nawaz:

So, in the more short term or medium term, even as you look to the lead-up to the midterm elections, in a practical way, when and how is this going to show up? Where will people see that?

Rick Hasen:

You know, the first people to see it are the for-profit television stations, because now the political parties are going to be able to get what's called the lowest unit rate. They're going to be able to get the cheapest advertising that candidates are entitled to.

So we're probably going to see more campaign advertising. It's going to show up, probably more Republican advertising because of that advantage I just talked about, in the short term. But, eventually, I don't think it's going to look all that different, because already we have such a deregulated system, thanks to earlier decisions of the Supreme Court.

There's so much money flowing into our politics today that it's hard to imagine that there's going to be even more money. It's just going to get shifted from some outside groups to some political parties.

Amna Nawaz:

It's worth reminding folks it wasn't always that way, right? It was after Watergate that a number of campaign finance regulations went into place specifically to lessen the influence of money into politics.

And then you have seen that erosion, as you mentioned, with the 2010 Citizens United decision over time. What has fundamentally changed about our campaigns and about our elections as a result of the erosion of those regulations?

Rick Hasen:

Well, I think what you're seeing now is a movement towards a plutocracy.

In 2016, there were no individuals or couples who contributed at least $100,000 -- $100 million to political groups. In 2024, there were nine such donors, so that just nine donors alone were putting in $900 million into the last election.

The Supreme Court 50 years ago in Buckley vs. Valeo said that independent spending can't corrupt, and you could only limit contributions to prevent corruption, which the court in more recent years has defined to be much more narrow, like quid pro quo bribery.

The court moved ideologically to the right, and it's now created an almost deregulated system, where we will be lucky if in the next five years we will still have campaign contribution limits to candidates and campaign disclosure rules.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, say more on that, because there are still limits on individual contributions. Do you see, based on what this court has shown, that those could potentially be challenged and go away as well?

Rick Hasen:

Well, so one thing I was looking for in the case was whether the court was going to signal that they were going to make it even harder for contribution limits generally to be upheld. And the court didn't do that today.

So, right now, the limit that you could give $3,500 directly to a federal candidate for office, that looks pretty safe. But the next thing I think that's going to be attacked are rules that were put in place in the McCain-Feingold law in 2002, which ban so-called soft money to political parties.

Once that opens up, you're going to see political parties be able to draw in much, much more money. They're going to be able to spend that money, and I think we're going to be back to the system I think in some ways worse than the pre-Watergate system, where the amount of money that's going to be put in to try to influence people's votes and influence what elected officials do once they're in office is going to continue to hit records.

Amna Nawaz:

That is Rick Hasen, professor of law and political science at UCLA, joining us tonight.

Rick, thank you so much.

Rick Hasen:

Thank you.