Conservative think tank argues Kansas law defining PACs … – Kansas Reflector

TOPEKA A conservative campaign-finance reform organization involved in a key federal court decision leading to creation of super PACs urged the Kansas Legislature to overhaul the states unconstitutional definition of political action committee and to end regulation of political advocacy groups raising or spending less than $5,000 annually.

Bradley Smith, representing the Institute for Free Speech in Washington, D.C., told the House and Senate elections committee that Kansas should allow unlimited donations to political parties and index to inflation all contribution limits in state law. He recommended Kansas remove disclosure requirements from modest donors and to generally error on the side of free-speech rights when shaping campaign laws or regulations.

The government should not and cannot constrain the right of the American people to discuss candidates and policies lightly, Smith said. Whether through deliberate choice or bureaucratic inertia, many provisions of federal and state campaign finance laws have drifted away from this basic purpose. While better than many states, Kansas is no exception.

Smith said a Kansas law requiring disclosure of donors giving $50 or more made people reluctant to take part in political campaigns and fed a cancel culture mentality resulting in harrassment of contributors.

The Institute for Free Speechs reform ideas was met with skepticism by some members of a Republican-led interim legislative committee that heard testimony Thursday and Friday from people enforcing, litigating and evaluating the states election standards. The institute declined to reveal to legislators a list of top donors, but one confirmed contributor was the Scaife Foundation. In 2020, the foundation gave more than $1 million to the Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution and American Enterprise Institute.

Sen. Ethan Corson, a Johnson County Democrat, said he struggled with the institutes credibility because it was unclear what deep-pocket political forces were funding the organizations extreme right-wing ideas about elections. He offered a personal summary of Smiths recommendations.

Basically, donor limits are bad. Regulating PACs is bad. Regulating contributions to parties is bad. Disclosure is bad, Corson said. What youre presenting, in my book, is kind of the fringe of the fringe of the fringe of First Amendment principles. Its hard to give any credibility to anything youve said without knowing who is behind you and what is cutting the checks.

Smith, chairman of the Institute for Free Speech, said the institute didnt disclose its contributors because it was none of your business what amounts were given by organizations or individuals.

This is the difference between living in the right-wing, think-tank world and living in the real world, said Corson, who made reference to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis line in a Harpers Weekly article that sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.

Smiths reply: Too much sunlight leads to sunburn.

Mark Skoglund, executive director of the state commission responsible for regulating campaign finance law, said the states campaign finance statutes were constitutional.

He said the bipartisan Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission was charged with focusing on disclosure and contribution limits, which were crucial aspects of a transparent electoral system.

Conservative and liberal Supreme Court justices repeatedly and overwhelmingly uphold these two pillars of campaign finance regulation as essential and constitutional, he said. Over and over again, the Supreme Court has held that even when First Amendment concerns are generated by a campaign finance law, the substantial benefits of disclosure outweigh any minimal impact it has.

Skoglund, who survied a 2022 effort by conservative lobbyists and legislators to force him out of the job, said claims campaign finance disclosure chilled political speech were misplaced. He said reform should be based on actual data rather than vague assertions reporting of donations deterred big and small donors.

Studies bear out that chilling is negligible or nonexistent, and more recent studies are starting to find the opposite view entirely that disclosure actually encourages participation, he said.

Skoglund asked the committee to increase staffing at the ethics commission, which operates with 8.5 staff with a budget of $800,000. He would welcome development of a new definition of PACs as long as it didnt undermine registrations in a way that released a flood of dark money into the state.

Joshua Ney, a Kansas attorney who has represented clients before the state ethics commission on campaign finance issues, said the 2024 Legislature should concentrate on identifying key principles of election law anchored in limited regulation of campaign speech. That analysis ought to be followed by formulation of clear standards of conduct and procedure grounded in the concept of ordered liberty, he said.

He said court fights were the likely consequence when the Legislature didnt write clear statutes. No amount of bureaucratic precedent through enforcement can fill gaps in law, he said.

I encourage this committee to engage in once-in-a-generation update to the manner in which Kansas regulates campaign activity and political speech, Ney said.

Ney said legislators should adopt a public policy statement providing that any ambiguity in campaign finance law would be interpreted in the least speech-restrictive manner. The state should clarify what PAC activities a legislator could take part in, he said. Determinations of what constituted a PAC should be refined so individuals or groups didnt get unintentionally swallowed by the campaign-finance bureaucracy, he said.

He said Kansas should adopt reasonable qualificiations for appointment of commissioners to the state ethics commission. The objective should be to prevent conflicts of interest without blocking service by people with experience in campaigns, public office or the political process.

The more clarity the Legislature provides, the less conflict there will be in administrative and judicial tribunals, Ney said.

Mark Johnson, an attorney and lecturer at the University of Kansas law school, said Kansas law related to individual contribution limits and disclosure requirements were constitutional because those provisions didnt violate First Amendment rights of an actual or potential contributor. He said, to his knowledge, no challenge to these state laws had surfaced in the past 40 years.

It is quite likely that no such challenge has been brought because those who favor elimination of the provisions, and who rely on First Amendment constitutional arguments in advocating their elimination, know they would lose, he said.

Heather Ferguson, director of state operations for the left-leaning nonpartisan Common Cause, said Kansas statutes on campaign finance should be considered woefully inadequate and weak in terms of compelling transparency.

The gold standard of a healthy democracy is to have a government that is responsive and reflective of the people that it serves and that it ensures that every eligible voter has an equal voice in our political process, Ferguson said. To meet this standard, voters need to know who is funding the campaigns of their elected officials and informing the public regarding ballot questions.

She said the heavy influence of corporate special interests and the money flowing into the election system was drowning out the voices of everyday Americans.

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Conservative think tank argues Kansas law defining PACs ... - Kansas Reflector