Supreme Court ruling gives lobbyists powerful new tool

WASHINGTON —

The Supreme Court on Thursday handed a new weapon to lobbyists: The threat to spend unlimited sums advertising against any federal elected official who votes the "wrong" way.

"We have got a million we can spend advertising for you or against you, whichever one you want,"' a lobbyist can tell lawmakers, said Lawrence Noble, a lawyer at Skadden Arps in Washington and former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission.

The decision seeks to let voters choose for themselves among a multitude of voices and ideas when they go to the polls, but it also will increase the power of interest groups at the expense of candidates and political parties.

It is expected to unleash a torrent of attack advertisements from outside groups aiming to sway voters, without any candidate having to take the criticism for dirty campaigning. The biggest beneficiaries might be well-placed incumbents whose favor companies and interest groups are eager to court.

The ruling comes at a time influence-seekers of all kinds have special incentives to open their wallets. Amid the economic crisis, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are trying to rewrite the rules for broad swaths of the economy, from Detroit to Wall Street. Republicans, meanwhile, see a chance for major gains in November.

Democrats predicted Republicans would benefit most from the decision, because they are the traditional allies of big corporations, which have more money to spend than labor unions.

Soon after the decision, President Obama called it "a green light to a new stampede of special-interest money in our politics." Democrats vowed to push legislation to install new spending limits in time for the fall campaign.

Republicans disputed the partisan impact, saying Democrats had proved effective at cultivating their own corporate allies: Drug companies spent millions of dollars to promote the administration's health-care proposals, for example, while friendly interest groups tap sympathetic billionaires and Hollywood money.

After new restrictions on party fundraising took effect in 2003, many predicted Democrats would suffer. But they took Congress in 2006 and the White House two years later.

While Democrats pledged new limits, some Republicans said Thursday that the decision might make it easier to get rid of limits on direct contributions as well. Several cases before lower courts, including a suit filed by the Republican National Committee against the Federal Election Commission, seek to challenge those limits.

Thursday's decision, in Citizens United v the Federal Election Commission, "is going to flip the existing campaign order on its head," said Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican campaign lawyer who has represented candidates and outside groups, including Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, formed to oppose Sen. John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.

"It will put on steroids the trend that outside groups are increasingly dominating campaigns," Ginsberg said. "Candidates lose control of their message. Some of these guys lose control of their whole personalities."

In practice, major publicly held corporations such as Microsoft or General Electric are unlikely to spend large sums on campaign commercials, for fear of alienating investors, customers and other public officials. Instead, wealthy individuals and companies might contribute to trade associations, groups such as the Chamber of Commerce or the National Rifle Association, or other third parties that could run commercials.

Previously, Noble of Skadden Arps said, his firm had advised companies to be wary about giving money to groups that might run so-called advocacy commercials, because such activity could trigger disclosure requirements.

"It could be traced back to you," he said. "That is no longer a concern."

Some disclosure rules remain intact. An outside group paying for a campaign commercial would still have to include a statement and file forms taking responsibility. If an organization solicits money specifically to pay for such political activities, it could fall under regulations that require disclosure of its donors. The disclosure requirements also would moderate the harshness of the third-party ads, because established trade associations or other groups are too concerned with their reputations to wage the contentious campaigns that ad hoc groups such as MoveOn.org or Swift Boat Veterans for Truth might do.

Two leading Democrats, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York and Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, said they had been working for months to draft legislation in response to the anticipated decision. One possibility would be to ban political advertising by corporations that hire lobbyists, receive government money or collect most of their revenue abroad. Another would be to tighten rules against coordination between campaigns and outside groups.

A third would be to require shareholder approval of political expenditures, or even to force chief executives to appear as sponsors of commercials their companies pay for.

Fred Wertheimer, a longtime advocate of campaign-finance laws, said the decision "wipes out a hundred years of history" during which U.S. laws have sought to tamp down corporate power to influence elections.

But David Bossie, the conservative activist who brought the case to defend his campaign-season promotion of the documentary "Hillary: The Movie," said he was looking forward to rolling out his next film in time for the midterm elections.

Titled "Generation Zero," it features the television host Lou Dobbs and lays much of the blame for the recent financial collapse on the Democrats. "Now we have a free hand to let people know it exists," Bossie said.