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Ruling opens up political ad frontier
Police barricades stand in the plaza in front of the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.
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KAI RYSSDAL: In the wake of yesterday's Supreme Court decision on campaign financing, one group of corporate executives is pleading for mercy. Executives from companies as far afield as Men's Warehouse and Playboy say they're already harassed by political fundraisers and now it's only going to get worse now. They have sent a letter to Congress asking for public financing of national elections.
There will be some winners out of yesterday's ruling though. Like the companies who'll turn all that corporate and union money into political ads. Here's Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman.
Mitchell Hartman: With yesterday's Supreme Court decision, the political advertising probably won't get any screechier, but there'll be more of it.
How much more? I asked media analyst Jack Myers.
Jack Myers: $300 million to a billion dollars in incremental spending just this year.
That's on top of a record $2.8 billion spent in 2008. Myers says the mid-term elections will be a bright spot for ad firms, TV and radio stations, and billboard companies.
Myers: For local media especially, which has been hurting, this has the potential of being a windfall.
The new money won't flow everywhere, though, says Evan Tracey of TNS Media Intelligence.
Evan Tracey: The stations that are going to benefit are going to be located in states that have a lot of competitive races, or they have a Senate or House seat that has national implications. Places like Florida, Ohio, California, Texas, Maine.
Tracey says what's not as clear is who will be spending more. It may not be the best-known companies.
Tracey: Corporate America is going to have to decide is this the right thing to do for their businesses, to go put a lot of money into political races, when they're on one hand laying off employees and having problems on their bottom line.
But Tracey says, while public companies subject to board and shareholder scrutiny may hold back, billionaire business titans like George Soros and his counterparts on the Right probably won't have any such hesitation.
I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.
Mr. Tracey speaks in broad generalities about corporations and 'the right' while choosing to explicitly name George Soros on the left. This bi-partisan expert seems to have a habit of editorializing when speaking to the press instead of reciting facts from his company's data (Kantar Media). Maybe Mr. Tracey should see if Fox News has any openings for commentators.
I vehemently disagree with the posted comment of Mr. Lovelace of Michigan. To equate a corporation with an independently wealthy individual is a logical fallacy. Wealthy individuals, in fact, have NEVER had any of the restrictions on their free speech that was at issue in the Citizens United case. In fact, people like T. Boone Pickens, throughout America's history, have been free to throw their money at the media to get their messages across. Also, the comment regarding unfair influence by unions is distorted, as unions have had strict restrictions on their ability to purchase media time. Unions, which consequently are on the wane in this country, exerted their power through their local membership, when politics was local. By contrast, with the Supreme Court's ruling, a fictitious entity, such as Exxon, which made $45 Billion in net profit last year, is free to buy ads against any candidate throughout the country without abandon.
Of course, the cynical view is that corporations have been buying candidates for the last 20 years through various backend means, so this ruling just means they don't have to tip-toe around anymore.
Left-wing "business titans" (if there are any that really qualify for that epithet) like Soros have always had opportunities to gain disproportionate influence over our political process. They, or the politicians they lobbied, wrote the campaign finance laws that have just been overturned, and made sure that they wouldn't be really subject to them. Similarly, unions have had unfair influence for decades, because this law was designed to restrict people who succeeded because they understood economics and human nature at their strong point, which "just happened" to be the unions' weak point.
