WASHINGTON DC — “This has not been a kind year for campaign finance reformers.

Setting aside the now-famous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling from the Supreme Court, which allowed corporations and unions to spend freely on campaign advertisements, there has been a flurry of challenges to other campaign finance laws in the courts.

Although several of these challenges were filed before the Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United, that decision encouraged opponents of campaign finance reform to push their challenges even further, according to experts on campaign finance cases.” Andrew Kreighbaum, OpenSecrets.org.

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CLEVELAND — “One notion that Democrats in Ohio and elsewhere haven’t been able to shake over the last generation or so is that their campaigns are funded by cigar-puffing party big wigs and labor bosses.

In the race to become Ohio’s next Attorney General, Republican candidate Mike DeWine played up to just this kind of stereotype during an interview with ONN anchor Jim Heath on the Aug. 15 edition of Capitol Square. Heath asked DeWine if he was concerned about trailing Democratic Attorney General Richard Cordray in fundraising. Cordray reported he had $3.5 million at the end of July, while DeWine, a former U.S. senator, had $2.1 million.

After explaining that recent campaign finance reports showed the fundraising gap narrowing, DeWine turned the focus back onto Cordray, insinuating that he is a tool of the Democratic party and labor union bosses with a much narrower base of support.” PolitiFact Ohio.

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WASHINGTON — ” Prompted by a request from the Federal Election Commission and after criticism from Democratic congressman Zack Space, Republican congressional candidate Bob Gibbs filed corrected campaign-finance reports yesterday with the federal agency.

Emily Pettigrew, a spokeswoman for Gibbs, said a computer glitch incorrectly reported individuals donating money to his general election campaign when the computer should have credited the contributions to his primary campaign…. The FEC questioned the original reports in two letters to Gibbs last week, warning that “if any apparent excessive contribution in question was incompletely or incorrectly disclosed, you must amend your original report with clarifying language.’” Jack Torry, The Columbus Dispatch.

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WASHINGTON DC — “It’s tough to underestimate the peril to impartial American justice that’s been highlighted in a new report on the big-time campaign money flowing into elections for justices on state Supreme Courts.

Total spending doubled in the past decade, from $83 million in the 1990s to $207 million in 2000-2009, according to the report from three nonpartisan groups — the Justice at Stake Campaign, the Brennan Center for Justice and the National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Equally alarming, those pushing the spending — corporations on one side, trial lawyers on the other — are using shell organizations such as the American Justice Partnership and the Alabama Civil Justice Reform Committee to keep their involvement hidden.” Akron Beacon Journal.

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COLUMBUS — “Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned years of legal precedent to give corporations, unions and other large organizations greatly increased rights to spend vast sums to influence elections and hide their sponsorship of political ads. The case, Citizens United vs. the Federal Elections Commission, was brought by the Citizens United organization, because the commission had refused in 2008 to allow the organization to air, just before the Democratic primaries in which Hillary Clinton was a candidate, a film that was very critical of her….

The Supreme Court cited the Constitution’s First Amendment provision about abridging the freedom of speech. The court seemed to ignore the stated purpose of the Constitution, in its preamble, about promoting ‘the general welfare.’

In my opinion, nothing so effectively abridges free speech in political campaigns as allowing large entities, with virtually unlimited funds, to buy out and bid up the price of the available broadcast time and printed advertizing space and flood them with professionally produced sales pitches for their preferred candidates and issues. These actions do not promote the general welfare.” The Columbus Dispatch.

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In Pay 2 Play, John Wellington Ennis explores the absurd heights of political corruption in Ohio, while following statewide elections that prove surprising and historic. The inspiring stories behind first-time candidates and the struggles of their underdog campaigns reveal the larger failures in our electoral process. Ennis grew up in Chicago and attended the N.Y.U. and U.S.C. film schools. Ennis is a co-founder of Video the Vote, a non-partisan national group that documents and reports on voting issues.

COLUMBUS — “Democrats recently canceled a pair of fundraising appearances by Ohio Department of Transportation director that were drawing fire from Republicans who said they smelled of pay to play.

As first reported last week by Gongwer News Service, invitations to Rep. Vernon Sykes’ Sept. 2 lunch in Akron highlighted ’special guest’ ODOT Director Jolene Molitoris. The event asked for donations ranging from $50 to $1,000.

‘You’re saying with a fundraiser: ‘Vote for me, I’m a good rep. I’ll do what’s right,’ said Rep. Louis Blessing, R-Cincinnati. ‘Here you have the chairman of the Finance Committee who appropriates funds to ODOT with the director who awards contracts basically saying, ‘You might want to get to know us. It might be wise to give money to us.’” Jim Siegel, The Columbus Dispatch.

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