Campaign Finance

Well, conservatives have had their sights set on these limits for a long time. According to Paul Seamus Ryan from Common Cause, two contributions-limits cases currently have certiorari petitions before the Supreme Court, one from Montana and the other from Texas. “Both jurisdictions’ limits were upheld by the circuit courts—and the plaintiffs/petitioners in both cases are asking the Supreme Court to hear their cases and declare the challenged contribution limits unconstitutional,” Ryan told me Wednesday.

With Election Day now less than two months away, Common Cause released its 2018 Democracy Scorecard to chart the positions of every Member of Congress on issues vital to the health of our democracy. The reforms in question range from legislation to create a small donor matching fund system and increased disclosure requirements for outside political groups to bills to curb gerrymandering and strengthen the protections in the Voting Rights Act.

"They are probably betting that there's no way there are four votes on the FEC to come after them for this, that's part of what's in the background here," said Paul S. Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation with government watchdog Common Cause. "So I think they're really pushing the boundaries of the law in order to game the contribution limits predicting that they will get away with it, and it's like we have correct protection, but just because you can get away with something doesn't make it right."

“All the information, as it’s trickled out, has only further confirmed our suspicion that the Trump Organization violated campaign finance laws, and maybe other laws too,” said Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause.

“I don’t really see a lot of gray area here,” said Paul Seamus Ryan, a campaign law expert and vice president for policy and litigation at Common Cause in Washington, D.C. “There appears to me to be an awful lot of expenses that the Hunters were indicted for that aren’t allowed by the FEC, and aren’t close calls at all.”

Martin G. Evans is a long-time advocate and volunteer at Common Cause Massachusetts and is professor emeritus of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. This essay was originally published by the Boston Business Journal.