Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | February 2012 24 In Focus for the purpose of issues advocacy, the “bundling” of lots of small contributions into big ones, and unregulated “soft money” donations to political parties. In 2002, Congress closed the soft money loophole and moved to rein in the PACs with additional reporting requirements and limits on their activities. Then in 2009 and 2010, a series of federal court rulings were issued that turned the rules on their ear by recasting campaign finance reform as a constitutional discussion about freedom of speech. Throwing decades of judicial precedent out the window, these rulings effectively dismantled the legal basis for spending limits and in the process extended an invitation to those with the deepest pockets — corporations, labour unions, super-rich individuals—to enter the system with as much money as they like. “The bottom line is that it creates the potential for one person to have far more influence than any one person should have,” said FredWertheimer, headof Democracy 21, a group that monitors election spending. It has summoned into existence a new breed of political beast, the “Super PAC,” which can accept unlimited contributions and spend unlimited amounts to support or oppose candidates as long as it remains independent of their campaign organisations and doesn’t “coordinate” its activities with them—a meaningless distinction if ever there was one, as FEC Commissioner EllenWeintraubhas observed. “Super PACs are functioning as alter egos of the candidates’committees,”she stated,“and are being run by their friends.” The Super PACs spent more than US$80 million on the 2010 mid-term elections, according to the non-profit news site ProPublica, and were instrumental in recapturing the House of Representatives for the Republicans. In the current electoral cycle they have amassed more than US$98 million to date. Laying into perhaps the most controversial ruling (by the US Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ) that unleashed the Super PACs, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a ringing dissent that the ruling “threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutionsacrossthenation.”MrWertheimer called it “the most radical and destructive campaign finance decision in Supreme Court history.” The tide turns—cartoon commentary on the rise of the“Super PAC”