How Dems' NRA loophole backfired

Politico ^ | 6-18-10 | Kenneth P. Vogel, Jonathan Allen, John Bresnahan

[STARWISE]

Hatched over the last few weeks by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) with backing from House Democratic leaders and the White House, it was a legislative maneuver rich with the kind of irony that often goes unremarked in Washington — a classic backroom special interest deal to help pass a bill that would require heightened disclosure of special interest spending on campaign ads.

The idea was to neutralize opposition to tough new campaign spending rules from one particularly powerful special interest group, the National Rifle Association, by exempting it as well as the left-leaning Sierra Club and the ecumenical Humane Society and AARP from certain disclosure requirements in the bill.

But while the maneuver was effective in getting the NRA to back down, the deal sparked a backlash that pitted big-money special interest groups, including some traditional allies, against each other, and turned fence-sitters and even some supporters of the bill into opponents.

Short of the votes needed for passage in the House, the bill was pulled Thursday night by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Nonetheless, a House Democratic leadership aide said Van Hollen and House Democratic leaders intend to honor the deal and stick by the plan. They consider it the only path to passage for the bill, which has little Republican support and dim prospects in the Senate.

The aide pointed out that the deal did not cost the bill the support of any of the major groups pushing for stricter campaign finance rules.

“The legislation itself is so important that Public Citizen is still going to continue supporting passage,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the group. But he bemoaned what he said were “special interests groups trying to make sure that this law applies to everyone except them. No one should be carved out.”

Known as the DISCLOSE Act, short for Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections, the Van Hollen bill is intended to tighten campaign finance restrictions loosened by the Supreme Court in its Citizens United decision in January.

That decision overturned decades of law barring corporations and unions from spending general treasury funds (as opposed to funds from political action committees) on ads that explicitly advocated a candidate’s election or defeat.

Conservatives and Republicans praised the decision as a victory for free speech, while liberals and Democrats —– including Obama —– predicted it could unleash a torrent of corporate-funded attack ads against them.

The DISCLOSE Act would ban certain corporations from airing such election ads, and would require corporate and union groups that did to name their top five donors on screen and on their websites, as well as feature their top official on camera in the ads.

Many special interest groups would be affected by the DISCLOSE Act since they are registered as non-profit corporations, and literally hundreds of them had come out in opposition to the bill.

But Van Hollen’s team was most concerned about the NRA, which in a show of strength in April forced Democrats to mothball a bill to grant the District of Columbia voting representation in Congress by demonstrating that it had the votes to simultaneously repeal the District’s strict gun control laws.

They calculated that the NRA’s opposition similarly could single-handedly sink the DISCLOSE Act by spooking conservative House Democrats whose support was needed to pass the bill, but for whom NRA opposition could be the kiss of death in an anti-incumbent election year expected to favor Republicans.

So when the NRA came out in formal opposition to the bill, arguing in a May 26 letter that the bill’s “byzantine disclosure requirements” have “the obvious effect of intimidating speech,” House Democratic leaders quickly pulled the bill from the calendar of the Rules Committee, which was scheduled to consider it the next day.

According to the House leadership aide, over the next two weeks, Van Hollen met twice with NRA chief lobbyist Chris Cox, (((former head of that great govt. agency, the SEC, that regulates Wall Street))) once accompanied by Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina and once by John Dingell of Michigan.

Both conservative Democrats are among the caucus’ leading opponents of gun control.

On Monday, POLITICO revealed the result of the negotiations:

an amendment to the bill that would exempt from the disclosure requirements organizations that have more than 1 million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, have members in all 50 states and raise 15 percent or less of their funds from corporations.

Though House Democratic sources say the goal was to exempt a handful of the biggest and most well-established advocacy groups, it turned out that only the NRA met all the criteria.

Advocates for tighter restrictions on campaign spending grumbled, opponents of the bill —– including the powerful right-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce —– accused the NRA of selling out, and gun control advocates pledged to oppose the bill unless the NRA exemption was removed, with Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y), one of the bill’s co-sponsors expressing “grave concerns with the NRA putting their fingerprint on too much of our legislation, and that is what has happened with this special carve-out.”

Meanwhile, other interests groups balked at the NRA’s preferential treatment and clamored to be made exempt, too.

But most problematic for the bill’s prospects:

liberal House Democrats balked at the perception that they were voting for a sweetheart deal for the NRA, regarded by many liberals as perpetuating gun violence in urban areas by opposing gun control measures.

As Rep. Mike Quigley, a Chicago Democrat, put it, since the NRA has worked against legislation to make it tougher to buy firearms at gun shows, it “simply cannot be allowed to play by a different set of rules than one that seeks to advocate for such sound policy.”

Van Hollen responded to similar concerns on Thursday, lowering the membership threshold to 500,000 for groups to qualify for the exemption, which brought in a handful of other top special interest groups, including the Sierra Club, the Humane Society and the AARP.

Now, progressive members can go back home and say that it’s not just the NRA that is exempted, it’s not just some NRA carve-out,” said the Democratic leadership aide. “Other groups are covered, too.”

But that approach seemed to backfire to some extent, as well, further inflaming other groups that did not qualify under the loophole —– and even some that would benefit from it.

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[jdege]

“That decision overturned decades of law barring corporations and unions from spending general treasury funds (as opposed to funds from political action committees) on ads that explicitly advocated a candidate’s election or defeat.”

The decision did no such thing.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

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