A voter-approved Maine limit on PAC contributions sets the stage for a legal test

PORTLAND, Maine — Maine residents this week overwhelmingly approved a referendum to limit donations to political action committees that spend independently in candidate elections, setting the stage for a legal showdown over caps on person contributions to so-called super PACs that spend freely in elections.

In the country’s only campaign finance reform initiative on the ballot on Election Day, residents voted to cap person donations to super PACs at $5,000. Supporters fully expect a lawsuit that they aspiration will bring clarity to PAC donations after the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to unlimited spending by super PACs.

The assess was carefully crafted to survive legal challenges as states try to discover a way to regulate campaign spending after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United selection, said state Sen. Rick Bennett, a supporter of the proposal.

“We’ve become a place where our democracy is being bought and sold by the richest people in our country,” said Bennett, a Republican from Oxford. “People of all political stripes back this assess. The only people who really resist this are the monied interests who abuse the structure.”

The Supreme Court opened the floodgates for large business and labor unions to spend freely on elections in the Citizens United selection, and a Court of Appeals selection three months later lifted limits on person spending.

The Maine initiative doesn’t attempt to limit independent spending on behalf of candidates. It focuses instead on limits on person donations to super PACS, an area the Supreme Court has not ruled on, observers declare.

Cara McCormick, chief of Citizens to complete Super PACs in Maine, said the objective is to reduce the outsized influence that super PACs currently enjoy through so-called “dim money” spending.

Political nonprofit groups are not required to disclose their donors and do not have to reveal much about how they spend the donations they receive. A super PAC may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to campaign independently for candidates for federal office. Its activities must be reported to the Federal Elections fee but is not otherwise regulated if not coordinated with the candidate or campaign.

“We have the correct to stand up to the large money in politics in Maine. We’re asserting our correct to limit the amount of money that someone can provide to a super PAC to eliminate not only corruption in our politics but the appearance of corruption in our politics. We ponder that’s something worth fighting for,” McCormick said.

In Maine, the limit would only apply to PACs spending money on behalf of candidates, not ballot committees involved in referendums. Maine law currently limits contributions to candidates, not PACs. For general elections, individuals can contribute a maximum of $1,950 to a gubernatorial candidate and $475 to a legislative candidate.

Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, a longtime advocate for campaign finance reform, and his Equal Citizens nonprofit backed the Maine referendum. A similar citizen initiative attempt in Massachusetts was blocked by the attorney general on constitutional concerns.

The U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled on the issue of person contributions to PACs, and long-established case law supports the concept that states can limit person contributions to PACs despite a selection to the contrary by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Lessig said.

The concern with unlimited person contributions is the uncertainty of a quid pro quo even when super PACs are spending independently and not coordinating directly with a candidate, Lessig said.

The matter will ultimately have to be decided by the Supreme Court.

“I’m very optimistic that the U.S. Supreme Court will apply existing jurisprudence that states are free to limit contributions,” he said. “The issue that this case would raise is not asking the Supreme Court to transformation its jurisprudence, not asking them to overturn Citizens United.”

The Maine law goes into result this winter, if there is no legal test, after an emphatic vote. Nearly 75% of voters supported the citizen initiative.