EDITORIAL More transparency needed for political ad spending
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Whether your preferred candidate was victorious or not in Tuesday’s special election, there’s probably one thing on which voters on both sides can agree: Thank goodness the political commercials are over!
The barrage of commercials, mostly negative advertisements from outside groups, clogged the airwaves and made the lead-up to the special election a dreadful slog to the finish line.
These groups – officially called political action committees, or PACs – are permitted to pour in unlimited money to support or lambaste candidates with little or no transparency about who is behind the funding.
These PACs overwhelmingly supported Republican Rick Saccone. Several of these outside groups spent a combined $12.5 million, mostly in attack ads bashing Democrat Conor Lamb.
The golden rule of these arrangements, though, is that the PAC and campaign are not permitted to have any communication to discuss messaging or strategy. That makes for a cartoon-like campaign that has no real substance.
Lamb, for his part, received about $2 million in outside support. However, he was able to fight back against the ad blitz by spending about $4 million in his own campaign money on advertisements. His campaign had complete control over that money, allowing him to set the narrative.
These outside groups can spend these staggering amounts of money thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. That opinion opened the floodgates because it suggested anyone can spend unlimited amounts of their own money in the name of free speech.
But, restrictions on these funds are needed. Currently, these organizations can shield the identities of their donors and need nothing more than a post office box address as an office headquarters.
Greater transparency is needed to allow voters to know who is attempting to influence them. It might also bring a little restraint in these bizarre ads that seemingly have no basis in reality.
Until then, we’ll continue to see the type of ugly campaign strategies that played out over the past few months.