On January 21, 2010 the Supreme Court of the United States of America handed down a decision that effectively struck down much of the 2002 McCain/Feingold campaign reform bill. This ruling, in the opinion of many politicians, reversed nearly 100 years of restrictions on major corporations and unions from directly spending money to advertise their support or opposition of specific canidates for federal elected offices. Below is excerpts from several articles written about this decision:
From Reuters: Supreme Court ruling could boost TV ad business
Paul J. Gough
Thu Jan 21, 2010 10:22pm ESTNEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – The U.S. Supreme Court’s loosening of restrictions on political ad spending by corporations and others will bring some joy to hard-hit local television stations and make it even more likely that 2010 will be a record year for political ad revenue.
Ruling 5-4 in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the court freed business, unions and nonprofits from some of 2002’s McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law. The law had limited political spending by those groups within 30 days of a primary and 60 days of a general election.
Thursday’s ruling likely will mean hundreds of millions of dollars in ad spending, much of it just before Election Day, will flow to local broadcast TV. Projections for the 2010 elections by TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group say total ad spending could exceed the $2.6 million to $2.8 million spent the last two cycles.
“The decision means a new gusher of money for the TV industry,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Thursday. “That’s good news for them in (economic) hard times.”
Thirty-seven gubernatorial races will be decided in November, including in such high-powered media markets as California, New York, Texas and Ohio. Twenty-one of those seats are open, meaning there will be competitive primaries in the spring. Add to that that one-third of the U.S. Senate and the entire House. One wild card is the economy, but Tracey said “it has the makings of a blowout year” for ad spending.
From MSNBC:
The Supreme Court’s decision to loosen campaign finance restrictions on corporations means a tsunami of company cash is likely to flood through the political system, giving big firms and labor unions even more influence over candidates.
Thursday’s 5-4 ruling allows companies and labor unions to spend whatever they want to get their political message out to voters, striking down limitations that prevented company profits from being diverted into political ads. The ruling did not affect a ban on companies contributing directly to political candidates.
From Bloomberg:
Bloomberg
The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.
.WASHINGTON—A divided Supreme Court struck down decades-old limits on corporate political expenditures, potentially reshaping the 2010 election landscape by permitting businesses and unions to spend freely on commercials for or against candidates.
President Barack Obama attacked the ruling and said it gave “a green light to a new stampede of special-interest money in our politics,” particularly “big oil, Wall Street banks, health-insurance companies and the other powerful interests” that “drown out the voices of everyday Americans.” He pledged to work with lawmakers to craft a “forceful response.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who has long fought campaign-finance regulations, hailed the court for a “monumental decision” toward “restoring the First Amendment rights of [corporations and unions] by ruling that the Constitution protects their right to express themselves about political candidates and issues up until Election Day.”
Some company executives and unions said they were ready to jump more directly into this year’s congressional campaigns under the new rules, but big companies may remain cautious about doing so for public-relations reasons.
The long term effects of this are at best uncertain but it was made perfectly clear in President Obama’s State of the Union speech on January 27,2010 that he and the Democrats in congress were clearly upset by this ruling, pledging to write new laws designed to subvert the intentions of the court. I suspect that this years mid-term elections will be filled with all sorts of ads from unions and corporations alike concerning all sorts of political candidates from both parties. Get ready for the landslide of political advertising to come.
Ho Hum Productions
Tags: Political Advertising