The Republican National Committee, headed by Chairman Michael Steele, is losing influence as interest groups increase their independent spending. (Flickr: pamhule)

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, many groups, from independent political action committees to the Republican National Committee, decided to test the waters and file cases against the Federal Elections Commission arguing that they, too, should enjoy the ability to solicit unlimited donations for spending on specific, non-coordinated campaign activities. In the case of the RNC, the group sought to reverse the longstanding “soft money” ban in McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation that prevented the parties from raising unlimited sums of money for “party building” and other activities not directly related to elections. While the challenge failed, the three-judge panel that ruled against the RNC did express worry about the implications of a growing divide between the fundraising capacities of outside groups and the traditional party committees.

[Economy1] “Under current law,” the panel wrote in a footnote to its opinion, “outside groups — unlike candidates and political parties — may receive unlimited donations both to advocate in favor of federal candidates and to sponsor issue ads. We recognize the RNC’s concern about this disparity, which, it argues, discriminates against the national political parties in political and legislative debates. But that is an argument for the Supreme Court or Congress.”

In the absence of any such intervention in Congress, however, that potential disparity is looking increasingly like a reality. After countless election cycles in which the traditional party committees — the RNC, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and their Democratic counterparts — dominated the landscape of independent expenditures on behalf of candidates, they are being substantially outgunned this time around by a nexus of outside spending outfits that represent a variety of special interests. According to data compiled in mid-October, 59 percent of all independent expenditures are coming from non-party-aligned groups — a substantial reversal from the previous midterm election cycle in 2006, when party committees accounted for 82 percent of all spending on such ads.

This election cycle, the bulk of independent expenditures — particularly among conservative groups — have in many ways mimicked the former role of the now-enfeebled RNC. As of Oct. 20, conservative outside groups have combined to spend over $99 million on ads to support Republicans and attack Democrats, more than twice as much as the NRSC and the NRCC. And the biggest conservative non-party players — like American Crossroads, Crossroads GPS, the 60-Plus Association, and Americans for Job Security — are linked both to each other and the Bush-era GOP by operatives such as Bush advisers Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, who informally advise and raise funds for the groups.

Election experts and campaign lawyers argue that the changed landscape has broad implications for the future of how elections are fought and won. Fueled by the anonymity afforded by the tax status of many outside groups on one side and the laws enforcing tight fundraising limits for the parties on the other, the shift in the landscape threatens to weaken the party committees’ ability to enforce discipline over the messaging it would like to adopt and the candidates it might want to run in different races around the country. Meanwhile, the shadowy and transient nature of many new groups entering the scene has the potential to usher in a decidedly more reckless era of campaign spending, in which outside spending entities that lack the accountability and reputational considerations of the national parties continue to seize a more prominent role in the national discourse.

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When the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law passed in 2002, it drew praise from reform groups as a way to limit the influence of money in elections. Now, however, many admit that after lax enforcement by regulatory agencies and court rulings like Citizens United, McCain-Feingold ultimately just caused that money to migrate to groups outside the umbrella of the traditional parties. Following the law’s passage, new independent groups began exploiting various sections of the tax code in earnest to serve as an outlet for the soft-money political contributions that previously made their way to the national party coffers.

“The soft money ban, no question,” said Caleb Burns, a partner at Wiley Rein, a law firm that specializes in election law, in response to a question about the cause of the declining influence of the party committees. “You can point right to that and the congressional testimony where the rise of independent third-party groups was predicted on the floor of the U.S. Congress.” Some groups opposed the bill’s basic principle of limiting any form of campaign spending, but to others, said Burns, “it was a policy objection among people who feared we’re going to legislate away the power of political parties. I don’t have a judgment as to whether the RNC is any less powerful in relation to American Crossroads or whomever, but by hamstringing the parties in terms of the money they can raise for similar activity, that can’t not be detrimental.”

The party committees aren’t in danger of disappearing anytime soon — the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, NRSC and NRCC are all still among the top ten groups makings independent expenditures — but experts note that their decline in relative importance in funding races could affect the bridging role they often play in crafting a common message among different interest groups in the parties.

“In coming up with a platform, in our country the parties tend to be umbrella groups that prevent splintering among allies, like social and fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party, or labor unions and ethnic minorities in the Democratic Party,” said Loyola Law School professor Rick Hasen, an elections law expert. “If parties were weaker, I think that you could potentially see some shift in the two-party system, but I don’t think it would ever come to that because the people who control the rules are also a part of the parties.”

But even if the two-party system remains intact, there is evidence that the new campaign finance landscape has already come to the aid of outside candidates who were, at times, opposed by party leadership. “I think you’re seeing a perfect example on the right with the rise of the Tea Party,” said Burns.

Indeed, in many low-turnout primaries across the country, outside spending groups like the Club for Growth and the Tea Party Express were able to leverage conservative anger into upset primary victories for hyper-conservative candidates through large, last-minute infusions of cash in states like Kentucky, Alaska and Delaware. And while the Republican Party has temporarily put its internecine conflicts on hold in an effort to win majorities in Congress, the party’s divisions following the election could quickly be magnified once again by the outside spending outfits that have risen to support the different factions.

“Republicans don’t really have that consensus on where to go and who’s in charge right now,” said Paul Blumenthal, who studies political spending at the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for greater transparency in government. “Where do they line up in the Republican [presidential] primary? How do they go after each other? That’s the next story.”

And while most outside spending efforts in the current general election cycle are informally acknowledged as a sort of auxiliary wing of the Republican and Democratic parties, there’s no guarantee that this will remain the case in elections to come.

“What we’ve seen up till now is the Republican leadership in exile control the party and decide who can get elected and who can’t, but it’s conceivable another group of people or corporations not in Republican leadership could do the same thing,” said Blumenthal. “While we haven’t directly seen that in many cases, there have been some groups, like [Alaskans Standing Together] running ads for Lisa Murkowski, that are made up entirely of corporations. This is just the first instance where such a landscape exists and I’m sure it will continue to surprise us.”

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As to whether this infusion of outside cash at the expense of the parties’ ability to enforce discipline represents a positive or negative trend for policy debates — and democratic discourse in general — it’s simply too soon to tell. On one level, said Burns, “as much as one might disagree with a group’s message, you’re increasing the amount of public debate and bringing in more voices, and that’s always a net positive.”

Yet non-party actors tend to bring an element of recklessness to political contests as well. “Outside groups tend to be more negative because there’s less reputational costs for doing so,” said Hasen. “If the Republican Party runs an ad that’s really negative, it could hurt the party brand, but a group like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is gone by the next election cycle.”

Analyses of the nature of ads during the current election cycle by the Wesleyan Media Project bear these predictions out, at least in part. While the overall percentage of negative ads isn’t up significantly over the 2008 cycle, the Project concludes that “one effect of increased interest group activity is that outside groups are increasingly becoming the source of negativity.”

One in every three attack ads in Senate races, according to the study, is brought by an interest group — a rate that’s up about 7 percentage points from 2008. A growing division of campaign labor has emerged, in other words, in which candidates in many races — most notably Republican Senate candidate Ken Buck in Colorado — pledge to run clean campaigns while relying on outside spending outfits to perform their dirty work for them.

“Campaign financing tends to be dynamic,” said Hasen. “After every election cycle there’s often a response.” But if recent trends continue and Congress doesn’t act, it’s possible the traditional party committees could eventually find themselves in an unfamiliar place — just one special interest group among many.

Rep. Kendrick Meek won Tuesday's Florida Senate primary against Jeff Greene. (Flickr, Center for American Progress Action Fund)

Rep. Kendrick Meek won tonight’s grueling Democratic primary battle for Florida’s vacant U.S. Senate against self-funded billionaire and Florida politics newcomer Jeff Greene. Meek has earned 55 percent of the nearly 500,000 votes cast so far, compared to 33 percent for Greene, both unofficial numbers posted by the state Division of Elections.

The contest focused largely on each candidate’s experience, personality and background. Meek went after Greene for everything from profiting off the collapsed housing market in Florida by making investments anticipating that the real estate bubble would burst, to his spotty record as a Democrat (he ran for congress in California as a Republican in 1982), to his short tenure in Florida (he became a resident three years ago).

Greene took aim at Meek’s record as a U.S. representative, his association with a now-convicted developer who employed Meek’s mother, and numerous allegations of self-dealing as a congressman, including accusations he misused taxpayer funds to lease a car in Florida.

Both the state and national Democratic parties officially endorsed Meek. That support, along with high-profile assists from national figures like former President Bill Clinton, helped the candidate withstand a barrage of more than $14 million worth of TV and radio ads launched by the Greene campaign. In contrast, Meek only spent about $4.7 million during the primary.

That leaves him with about $2.5 million left as he enters what promises to be an even tougher battle against two well-funded, experienced and well-rested candidates in the general election: Republican Marco Rubio and independent Charlie Crist — neither of whom faced primary opposition. Rubio has about $4.5 million cash on hand, while Crist has about $8 million.

Crist’s run complicates things. He was elected governor of Florida as a Republican but has left the party and struck out on his own, potentially luring coveted independent and swing voters from both parties. Crist has been reaching beyond Republican and independents, to woo middle-of-the-road Democrats with some apparent success.

So Meek emerges into this three-way race behind in the polls. He averages 17 percentage points, compared to 35.4 for Rubio and 34 for Crist, according to an average of five polls compiled by the website Real Clear Politics. He’s also behind in fundraising, and has the least name recognition of the top three candidates.

“It’s the best spot he’s been in since Crist got into race,” says Thomas Eldon, of SEA Polling, a Democratic polling firm that has no affiliation with the Senate race. “It’s the best spot he’s been in since the entire election.”

That’s because the primary galvanized Democratic support for him that he maybe did not have a month ago, and that may open up new donors. But Meek risks losing voters to Crist if he doesn’t appear to be winning. “The question is how long that support can that be sustained if he doesn’t keep competitive poll numbers,” Eldon says.

The gridlock may be frustrating for those who want to see immigration reform pass, but it also has political benefits — particularly for Democrats hoping to win over Latino voters, as Scott Wong explains at Politico:

“If you’ve been milking it for all its worth as a political issue, you don’t want [immigration] to go away,” said former Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), who served more than 20 years in the House and was part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers who pitched an unsuccessful immigration bill in 2005. …

One Democratic House aide said a handful of Republicans have launched their political careers by talking tough on illegal immigration.

“The hardest-line immigration hawks say they are for legal immigration but fight like hell against anything that resembles legal immigration,” said the aide, who specializes in immigration issues. “It’s a good political strategy, but it’s not a good immigration strategy. That is part of the problem that has led to gridlock.”

But President Barack Obama and other Democrats also have an incentive to keep the issue in play: They want Republicans to keep alienating Hispanic voters.

“There are always politicians who see this as a good political football vs. a policy problem to be solved,” the aide said. “They would rather have the fight over immigration to fire up Latino voters than jump into this with both feet.”

As political gambles go, it’s a big and risky one: $50 million to test the proposition that the Democratic Party‘s outreach to new voters that helped make Barack Obama president can work in an election where his name is not on the ballot.

The standard rule of midterm elections is that only the most reliable voters show up at the polls, so both parties have traditionally focused on the unglamorous and conventional work that turns out their bases. But this year, the Democrats are doubling down on registering and motivating newer voters — especially the 15 million heavily minority and young, who made it to the polls for the first time in the last presidential election.

That said, not all Democrats are on board with the idea:

Some veteran Democratic Party operatives are also skeptical that the $50 million investment will pay off — except, perhaps, in keeping the grassroots operation alive for Obama’s reelection bid two years from now. Some even suggest that the president’s team has put his long-term interests ahead of his party’s immediate struggle for survival.

“I have zero confidence that they’re heading in the right direction here,” says one longtime Democratic organizer who didn’t want to be quoted by name criticizing his party’s major midterm election initiative. Added another: “I think they’re going to come in for a very rude awakening. It’s going to be brutal.”

You can count me among the skeptics; I’m just not sure how much the party and OFA can do to mobilize enough young voters and minorities to reduce the enthusiasm gap with Republicans. I’m not convinced that this is a self-interested move to keep the 2008 grassroots operation alive for Obama’s re-election, but even if it were, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, even if Democrats survive November with their majorities intact, they can all but kiss governing goodbye. Not only will Democrats possess smaller majorities (possibly razor-thin), but they’ll be faced with a GOP that is confident, reinvigorated and more than prepared to turn the outrage and obstructionism up to 11. If the goal for Democrats this year is to walk away from the midterms with something, then a grassroots primed to re-elect Obama in 2012 isn’t something to dismiss.

“We have concluded that allegations of improper conduct rest on factual errors and lack a basis in the law,” the memo reads.

First, it addresses the rumor that the administration offered Sestak the position of Secretary of the Navy. “The President announced his intent to nominate Ray Mabus to be Secretary of the Navy on March 26, 2009, over a month before Senator Specter announced that he was becoming a member of the Democratic Party in late April. Mabus was confirmed in May. At no time was Congressman Sestak offered, nor did he seek, the position of Secretary of the Navy.”

Then, it confirms that, as reported this morning by Greg Sargent, the White House enlisted Bill Clinton to see if Sestak would be interested in an uncompensated advisory role in the executive branch, on top of his congressional duties.

“It has been suggested that discussions of alternatives to the Senate campaign were improperly raised with the Congressman,” the memo continues. “There was no such impropriety. The Democratic Party leadership had a legitimate interest in averting a divisive primary fight and a similarly legitimate concern about the Congressman vacating his seat in the House. … There have been numerous, reported instances in the past when prior Administrations — both Democratic and Republican, and motivated by the same goals — discussed alternative paths to service for qualified individuals also considering campaigns for public office. Such discussions are fully consistent with the relevant law and ethical requirements.”

Full memo here. (h/t Marc Ambinder)

State Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) in a Dec. 29 campaign ad (YouTube)

Days after the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling–an icon ever since his performance helped the team win the 2004 World Series–let the word get out that he was considering a run for the seat. Two weeks later, he decided to take a pass. A potentially sensational campaign became a surefire win for the Democrats. When state Attorney General Martha Coakley won the Democratic Party’s nomination, one newspaper reported, matter-of-factly, that she was “poised to replace Kennedy” in the January 19 general election.

On Monday, Schilling returned to the fray. He gave his stamp of approval to the less-famous Republican who ended up running for Kennedy’s seat: Scott Brown, a state senator from Wrentham, Mass.

[GOP1]“If this state does the right thing, and elects Scott Brown, it will, in addition to being a comeback/upset of 2004 proportions, put a screeching halt to the Democratic [Party's] fast tracking this country into an abyss,” Schilling wrote on his blog. “This state can literally change the Nation in one day, think about that and then go vote for Scott Brown and make it happen.”

With those words, Schilling captured the enthusiasm of conservatives who worry that a health care reform bill is hurtling towards President Obama’s desk. Tentatively, with only 14 days to go until the election, a number of GOP strategists, Tea Party activists, and conservative bloggers are trying to do for Brown’s campaign what they did for the campaign of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in last year’s NY-23 special election–hopefully, with more success. Hoffman, a first-time candidate, was propelled past a centrist Republican and ended up narrowly losing a traditionally Republican seat to Rep. Bill Owens (D-N.Y.).

“I’ve been emailing my contacts, saying that this is the start of the revolution,” said Barbara Anderson, the executive director of the Massachusetts anti-tax group Citizens for Limited Government. “If Brown wins, it will be a shot heard around the country.”

While interest in Hoffman’s campaign was nudged along by high-profile endorsements and polls showing the first-time, third-party candidate steadily rising, Brown’s campaign has gained traction by exploiting a gap in the news cycle. There has not been a poll on the race since a Western New England College survey released on October 26, 2009, which had Coakley leading Brown by 26 points. (On Monday, pollster Scott Rasmussen told TWI that his company would go into the field and conduct a poll on the race.) And over the last week of December, when little else was happening, Brown reported that he’d raised $600,000 and put out a TV ad comparing himself to John F. Kennedy, who held the seat before he was elected president–both of them, said Brown, wanted to cut taxes.

The lack of hard polling data and the Brown-driven impression that his campaign was surging were picked up online. Over the Christmas and New Years holidays, the little-known, Massachusetts-based blog Conservative Revival conducted its own “citizens poll,” which consisted of the blogger and her husband calling names in the phone book and asking who they supported. If no one picked up the phone, they left messages informing voters that Brown “vote against the government’s takeover of our health care” and “bring balance back to our Senate.” Their amateur poll showed Brown in the lead. HillBuzz, a blog written by die-hard supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton who oppose President Obama, encouraged readers to make phone calls for the candidate and “stop Healthcare Rationing, Cap & Tax, Amnesty for Illegals, and every other crazy thing Liberals in Washington want to do by putting [Brown] into deceased murderer and womanizer Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.” On December 30, Republican strategist Patrick Ruffini–who is doing some online work for Brown–published a lengthy argument for conservatives to take a “calculated risk” and donate to Brown.

That enthusiasm hasn’t wafted up to strategists in either party. Neither the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee nor the National Republican Senatorial Committee has invested much in the race. While a spokesman for the NRSC pointed out that Brown’s race is one of the featured campaigns on the organization’s homepage, and that the organization has aided Brown’s campaign to the tune of $50,000, that’s less than one-tenth the commitment that the NRCC made to Jim Tedisco, the unsuccessful GOP candidate for a Democratic-held House seat in a New York special election last year.

“My guess is that nationalizing the election would help the other team,” said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform. “One reason that this is more doable is that the other team is not worried about losing. If RNC or the NRSC was running a billion dollars worth of ads, you’d put the Democrats on alert. I think the smart move is to concentrate on GOTV and talk radio.”

Norquist, a Massachusetts native, added that he’d seen more signs for Brown than Coakley when he was in the state last week. “But if signs could vote,” he said, “Ron Paul would be president.”

Mary Ann Marsh, a Boston-based Democratic strategist, offered a simpler reason for the national GOP’s approach to the race: It’s unwinnable.

“Massachusetts is not going to send a Republican to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat,” said Marsh. “There is a playbook for winning as a Republican in Massachusetts. Brown has ignored it.”

Marsh argued that Brown’s push to appeal to the national conservative base and gin up Tea Party enthusiasm–by promising, for example, that he “could be the 41st senator that could stop the Obama proposal that’s being pushed right now through Congress”–would backfire statewide. While Massachusetts was the site of multiple Tea Parties, and while those activists are swinging behind Brown, there’s no data suggesting that voters are in the mood to stop the Senate’s health care bill. A September 2009 poll conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Boston Globe found voters supportive of the state’s health care reform–a mandate that conservatives compare to the plan moving through Capitol Hill–by a 37-point margin. While Brown supporters argue that Coakley has run a lackluster campaign that hasn’t excited Democrats, polling has consistently shown the attorney general to be the state’s most popular politician, with favorable numbers in the 50s or 60s. And she is being advised by Lynda Tocci, a turnout guru who managed Hillary Clinton’s election-day effort in the New Hampshire primary. All of that, said Marsh, contrasted well against Brown’s strategy of “winning the news cycle” and “spinning” conservative bloggers into thinking he had a shot.

“Brown could get elected in Mississippi, but not Massachusetts,” said Marsh.

With two weeks to go, conservative activists are still divided on whether to bet on Brown. While Moe Lane has used his perch at RedState.com to advocate support for Brown–Lane has encouraged Sarah Palin to nationalize the race with an endorsement, as she did for Doug Hoffman–the site’s editor, Erick Erickson, was more bearish. “I think the odds are still against Brown in a way that they were not necessarily against Hoffman,” said Erickson.

Norquist, who was hopeful that Brown would at least make a “stronger showing than expected,” argued that conservatives had a reason to help out Brown. “This is one of those lopsided things where if they win it’s nothing, and if we win it’s the cover of Time magazine.”

The Denver Democratic headquarters was vandalized last night, the long bank of windows that fronts the building smashed. Authorities reportedly apprehended the vandal but no details on his identity or motives so far have been released. [...]

7News Denver Channel quotes Democratic Party Chairwoman Pat Waak, who said she received a call from police at 2:54 a.m. notifying her of the attack.

“There is a poster up on the wall that is kind of anti-health care reform and I didn’t see it yesterday, so it begs the question whether that was part of it,” Waak said. “I know that tempers are really hot right now and they are being fueled. I would hope that people would take this at least as a sign that we need to have a little calmer debate about health care reform, which everyone needs right now.”

Littman has previously served as policy director for Sen. Barbara Boxer and as the top staff member of the House Subcommittee on Government Activities and Transportation. He’s also run his own lobbying firm, Littman Associates, and taught at American University.

“With Drew leading our team, I know that my office will be able to uphold the Minnesota tradition of excellent and responsive constituent service,” Franken said in a statement announcing the move. “With his years of experience and his expertise in helping new senators hit the ground running, Drew has become a trusted advisor and a valuable resource as I prepare to take office.”

This is the second major personnel move that Franken has made since a three-judge panel determined that he won the senate election by 312 votes. Last week he picked Alana Peterson, a veteran of Rep. Jim Oberstar’s (D-Minn.) office, to be his state director.

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Paul Demko is a reporter for TWI’s sister site, The Minnesota Independent.

- Tom Swan, who managed Ned Lamont’s 2006 Senate campaign.

- Bob Fertik of Democrats.com, who you used to see at every liberal event pushing for the impeachment of former President George W. Bush.

- Paul Hogarth of BeyondChron.

- Todd Beeton of MyDD.com.

- John Arovosis of AmericaBlog.com.

So some of the people you’d expect to join this, but not really a landslide of anti-Specter sentiment. I can think of dozens of prominent progressives who have not joined this particular cause.

“There is nothing more important for our Party than bringing the truth to bear on the Democrats March to Socialism,” said Jeff Kent, the Washington state committeeman who proposed the resolution. “Just like Ronald Reagan identifying the USSR as the evil empire was the beginning of the end to Soviet domination, we believe the American people will reject socialism when they hear the truth about how the Democrats are bankrupting our country and destroying our freedom and liberties.”

This sort of thing was an issue, if sort of a minor one, in the RNC race that Steele won. At the end of 2008 the RNC conservatives drafted a resolution condemning the Bush White House for the Wall Street bailouts. The resolution, which in its ideological harshness was a big step away from what the RNC usually does, was supported by … Michael Steele. The argument against that resolution was that it would set a dangerous precedent, and that argument doesn’t look wrong today.