WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court's decision to wipe out most campaign spending limits, coming on top of the Massachusetts Senate upset, may deal a major blow to Democrats and boost Republicans in the November congressional elections.
In a 5-4 decision, the court's conservative bloc said corporations have the same First Amendment rights as individuals and, for that reason, the government may not stop corporations from spending freely to help their favored candidates win elections.
The Massachusetts vote, which ended the Democrats' filibuster-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate, had already sent shock waves through business-oriented interest groups and lobbyists, forcing some to reconsider their willingness to cooperate with President Barack Obama on such contentious issues as health care and the environment.
Even before Tuesday's special election to fill the Senate seat long held by the late Ted Kennedy, increasingly militant pressure from conservatives had spurred a clear, well funded turn toward supporting Republican candidates, including Massachusetts Sen.-elect Scott Brown.
And the court decision, which ends a long-standing ban on direct corporate spending on political campaigns, is expected to swell the already substantial flow of campaign money from business groups into Republican coffers.
"The Supreme Court just predetermined the winners of next November's elections," an angry Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., declared.
Setting a high bar
Schumer and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the chairman of the Democratic House re-election effort, said they would offer legislation to scale back the reach of the decision before November's congressional elections.
But the fact that the Supreme Court grounded its ruling in basic First Amendment rights will make it hard for Congress to legislate substantial restrictions, even if the votes are available to do so.
The court decision did not strike down the ban on direct corporate giving to individual candidates for federal office; that issue was not raised in the case before the Supreme Court. But the distinction is not expected to have major importance because most business-related contributions were already flowing through lobbying organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and independent groups organized to support candidates on the basis of issues.
It was the latter kind of spending that flooded into the Massachusetts Senate race at the last minute, including more than $1 million spent by the Chamber to support Brown in the last few days of the race.
The Chamber's spending has come under fire from reformers, but the Supreme Court decision that corporations have as much right to contribute directly to such groups as individuals do likely clears the way for it to spend more freely than ever on the 2010 midterms.
Strange bedfellows
Politically, one of Obama's most notable achievements during his first year in office had been persuading some key Republican- leaning business lobbies to support Democrats and to work with the administration on some of its biggest initiatives.
In particular, Obama's efforts had produced a noticeable shift in the patterns of giving and participation with organizations such as the Business Roundtable, the National Restaurant Association, the National Federation of Independent Business and the pharmaceutical industry.
Last year, following Obama's inauguration, those groups broke ranks with hard-line business organizations and worked with the administration, especially on health care. The Roundtable and the NFIB had joined a coalition with organized labor All of them, for example, had refused to join a chamber backed "Start Over" coalition opposing the Senate and House health bills.
But in the days leading up to the Massachusetts vote, when polls showed Brown heading toward a historic upset, some of those groups turned back toward their Republican roots.
Conservative pressures are now expected to intensify. That worries Democrats, as does the effect of the court ruling.
"The decision is a big worry for Democrats," says Michael Meehan, a former DSCC official who has run several Senate campaigns in recent years. "It totally swings the balance.
"In a typical contested Senate race we calculate that one-third of the spending comes from the candidate, one-third from the party and one-third from outside groups. There are still limits on the first two, but unlimited sums are allowed from corporate America. To the extent that corporations continue to favor Republicans, this is a major concern for Democrats everywhere," he said.
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who co-authored the current campaign spending limits, said the decision gives a big advantage to the corporate world. "Corporations have huge war chests that far exceed current spending in our political system," he said.
Total spending on political advertising in the 2008 election cycle reached a record $2.6 billion.
Republican consultants, in particular, argued that the decision would simply shift spending by PACs and issue-based "front groups" to the corporations themselves.
"I don't believe that the ruling will fundamentally change the outcome of the elections, given the obscene amounts of money that was spent independently in the last two years by everyone," said Jim Innocenzi, a GOP strategist in Alexandria, Va.
