Santa Maria Sun / News

A local politician aims to reverse a Supreme Court campaign financing ruling

BY AMY ASMAN

Assemblyman Pedro Nava is sounding the bugles against the U.S. Supreme Court. The Santa Barbara Democrat recently announced he’s planning to ask Congress to pass a constitutional amendment overturning the head court’s Jan. 21 decision to grant corporations the right to make campaign contributions through political action committees, or PACs.

The 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ultimately voids a long-standing ban on corporate campaign financing.

In the majority statement, the justices said the First Amendment protects more than just an “individual on a soapbox and the lonely pamphleteer.” Banning corporations from making contributions through committees,
the justices said, is limiting their right to
free speech.

However, Nava, like many Democrats, is vehemently opposed to the decision and its projected impact on the future of political campaigning.

“The Supreme Court has, with one irresponsible decision, obliterated 100 years of bipartisan policy limiting corporate influence in politics,” Nava said in a release to the media. “This decision does nothing to actually protect the free speech rights of citizens established by the First Amendment.

“Corporations are legally created economic entities, not people,” Nava continued in the release. “This decision will allow them to spend enormous sums of shareholders’ money on campaign messages that have little or nothing to do with the beliefs held by actual people. This will only serve to empower corporate interests and further diminish the American public’s already dim view of the political process.”

Nava plans to amend his current Assembly Joint Resolution 3 (AJR3)—legislation that would require politicians and other political organizations to include a statement clearly identifying major donors of $50,000 or more in their campaign advertisements—to include an amendment upending the Supreme Court’s decision.

AJR3 is awaiting a hearing on the Senate floor in early March.