Which one is Jeb? (Hint: he pretended to be in the center back then too.)
While campaign finance laws have been rendered a joke in in the years following Citizens United, the recent announcement that Jeb Bush intends to transfer much (or maybe most) of his traditional campaign functions from his own campaign to a friendly Super-PAC marks a dramatic, consequential development for any remaining campaign financing limits and related protections for the democratic process.
As a result, this development also marks a significant challenge to the news media to "up its game" and begin integrating a more knowledgeable and comprehensive reporting of campaign finance into its election coverage. I can hear the reader laughing now: right! Point taken, but the press still has responsibilities and we still should demand better performance. (Here is an easy question: if you are newspaper with resources for only one reporter to cover the Bush campaign, do you assign him or her to follow the campaign or the Super-PAC? I'd argue the latter, if the intention is to report something meaningful.) There also has been some decent reporting to date, but it no longer should be shunted off to niche columns and back-pages.
Certainly, the lazy cynicism I have read to date is indefensible. I mean how many articles are going to repeat the absurdity that this move is intended to free Bush "to spend less time raising money"? And, while enforcement of existing campaign finance laws admittedly is criminally lax (a much bigger story in itself), the press had better stop acting like that makes it legal.
Anyway, for what it worth and to do my part, I'll try to think and write more often about these campaign finance issues. As an initial start, here is an important, related NYT piece, that describes one way the Bush folks hope to avoid the prohibition on coordination with Super-PACs (that looks illegal to me if a common sense reading of laws were ever to apply):
Aides to Jeb Bush are considering an ambitious data-selling system that would exist for his eventual presidential campaign and outside groups supporting it, three people briefed on the plan confirmed. . . .
The basic idea involves allies of the former Florida governor using an existing, for-profit entity to sell data to his eventual campaign and the political action committee and “super PAC” that will support his candidacy, the people privy to the plan said.
The data that would be for sale could take different forms, but could potentially include information like an enhanced voter file and raw polling information.
The ability to buy the same appended voter information could increase the efficiency of the super PAC and the campaign to target voters in a parallel way, without breaking laws about coordination between campaigns and outside groups. The entity could, in theory, eventually sell information to the Republican National Committee or other Republican committees if Mr. Bush is the nominee. . . .
Helpful tip to the NYT: don't meekly acquiesce or assume that this could work "without breaking laws about coordination between campaigns and outside groups," unless you care to explain how you reached that editorial/reporting conclusion. Here is another piece from
the WashPost that suggests that a political campaign could use nonprofit organizations to pay policy staffers and generate papers that the campaign could use.
In sum: a lot of stories, even campaign finance stories, can be about the political horse race alone. I think this new Jeb Bush proposal is substantively transformative and likely will greatly accelerate (in unpredictable ways) the influence of big money in elections. The press has a duty to spend a lot more time investigating, reporting and explaining the intricacies of campaign finance laws and financing activities in their general coverage. That was always the case, but there is just no excuse going forward.