Campaign Finance and Election Law
“How can we trust [this Candidate] to make laws, when he can’t even follow the laws that we have?”
If you follow politics, you’ve probably read that quintessential line regarding campaign finance law. Here’s how it happens: someone who opposes your campaign or cause files a campaign finance complaint, usually with no basis in fact or law. Because campaign finance law is complex, the journalist your opponent gets on the phone (and his editor) can’t see through it and treat the complaint like it’s legitimate. Before the complaint is even read by the agency your opponent filed it with, front page headlines announce that you’re being investigated for campaign finance violations. The article has your opponent saying something akin to the quote above. Behold, the law has provided your opponent with a free media cycle and a legal dispute that hurts your campaign and might hang over your head long after election day.
Campaign finance law should be just a matter of accounting. Unfortunately, it is not. More than four decades of tussling between “reform” and Americans just trying to engage in the political process has left federal laws and the laws of many states a shed full of dully-crafted blades that are wielded against citizens for any reason but keeping politics clean.
We see through the self-righteous veneer that nearly always attends campaign finance complaints and prosecutions, and respond with force and tact.
