What does the "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" ruling mean for New Yorkers?

What is the effect of this week's landmark Supreme Court decision on state and local New York politics? The Court issued a sharply ideologically divided 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC on Thursday, essentially removing all bans on corporate funding in elections. The only restrictions remaining are those that limit corporations from directly contributing obscene amounts of cash into the campaign funds of individual candidates. Short of that, corporations have been given full free political speech rights in the form of unlimited spending on advertising for or against candidates in any election: national, state, and local.

Do New Yorkers need to panic at this fundamental shifting in the political landscape? It depends on whom you ask. Senator Chuck Schumer sharply decried the recent ruling, calling the decision "activist and far reaching." Interim Senator Kirsten Gillibrand issued a shorter but equally indignant statement on the verdict, calling it a "major setback" for voters in their struggle to be heard over the already disproportionately strong voices of corporations. Representative Jerry Nadler of New York's 28th District in his own statement accused the Court of recklessness and deliberate disregard for years of precedent in Supreme Court history. On the other hand, FOX News, the Wall Street Journal, and other media and corporate organizations, as well as many Republicans, voiced overtures of praise and approval for the Court's wisdom in asserting the primacy of the First Amendment over government censorship.

Ideology aside, what exactly will the ruling mean for New York? According the Campaign Finance Board of New York City, the ruling will have little effect on city elections, because NYC already bans direct contributions to candidates and employs strong requirements for disclosure in order to preserve transparency and accountability. They stated in response to the ruling: "NYC's public matching funds program enables small donors a voice to counterbalance special interest spending..."

Apparently the author of the above article, Azi Paybarah, did not fully grasp the breadth and scope of the ruling. First, the ruling left in place the restrictions on direct contributions to candidates, so while he is correct that the ruling leaves NYC's restrictions in place, that was not the point of the ruling to begin with. Similarly, the disclosure requirements Mr. Paybarah referred to were also upheld by the ruling. He seems to have missed the main thrust of the ruling, which was to remove any restrictions a corporation might have otherwise run into in paying for virtually unlimited advertising time to sink a candidate who might propose something like term limits, or campaign finance reform, or any number of a host of public policy options that are remotely hostile to corporate interests. That is what New Yorkers need to be concerned about. Further, the disclosure requirements are a meager check on the otherwise unlimited power of corporations to fund the elevation or destruction of any public official they decide to target for any election at any level of government.

As for the state-wide races, the competition for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's seat just got a lot more complicated. While she stood to face primary challenges to even run for her seat, both Democratic and Republican competitors for her seat can officially begin to court corporate sponsors to run early and frequent advertisements attacking her, starting today. It is essentially open season on the New York Senate seat, and this will become more apparent in other national elections. Despite this obvious truth, Blair Horner, director of New York Public Interest Research Group, claims the ruling will not affect Albany.

Not to disrespect Mr. Horner, but in a state in which corruption and ethics reform is already a hot issue, how can one not expect corporations to start funding candidates who oppose ethics and corruption reform, especially when corruption has just been officially legalized by the Court? Unlimited funding for campaign advertising presents the potential to threaten and coerce candidates and public officials, creating the very "chilling effect" on public policy and public speech that the Court claimed it was seeking to prevent in its ruling. 

While New York has had no previous restrictions on corporate spending on elections, this new nationwide system backed by the Courts casts doubt on all the prospects of any fair elections.  It is not merely whether it tangibly changes individual systems, but the entire political paradigm in which candidates and public officials operate has been shifted.  Further, by being able to drastically influence national and local elections as well, corporations have been further empowered to enlist "legitimate" voices in the form of other state and local candidates who can now be bought and leased to provide campaign resources and endorsements in New York elections.

In the short term, there is no way to say what the impact will be on New York and public policy. What is most concerning, however, is that the impact may never be fully measurable. Part of the problem with the Court's ruling is that by empowering money as speech, the very threat of the use of money also becomes powerful speech. A corporation will not even need to run an ad against a public official; the mere threat of a deluge of ads will be enough to alter their stance on a particular issue. And that will never show up on a public disclosure form, nor can any set of transparency laws monitor implicit and behind-the-scenes threats such as those.

For now, Democratic public officials have mostly come out against the ruling, and while they still maintain control at the national level of the agenda, they may be able to put some boundaries on the new political landscape. However, if the health care debacle is any indication, they will have an enormously difficult time mustering unity and public support behind any legislative action that is not in the interests of large corporations. If the health care industry can effectively sink health care reform as an issue, imagine what kind of damage corporations can do now that they have the ability and the resources to actively oppose any candidate who does not serve their interest.

This verdict is more than a legal travesty; it is a public policy nightmare for every state and municipality in the United States, particularly at the District level.

For my own national take on the verdict from a Constitutional and democratic (small "d") perspective, please visit my personal blog.