The Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission on Friday seeking the ability to raise unlimited donations from individuals, the latest attempt by the GOP to reverse a seminal 2002 campaign finance overhaul. In its suit, the party committee argues that it has a First Amendment right to raise the kind of massive contributions that now fuel super PACs and other independent groups. Currently, individuals can only give $32,400 a year to party committees. Overturning that limit would knock out a major plank of the McCain-Feingold Act, which banned parties from accepting soft money. “I believe it is my job as the leader of the Republican Party to do everything in my power to help our candidates and get out our message of economic growth and opportunity,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. “The patchwork of limits on political speech undermines the First Amendment and puts high transparency, full-disclosure groups like the RNC on an unequal footing with other political entities. We are asking that political parties be treated equally under the law.”
Joining the suit, which was filed in federal district court in Washington, were the Republican Party of Louisiana, the Jefferson and Orleans Parish Republican Executive Committees, and Roger Villere, chairman of the Louisiana Republican Party.
The case comes on the heels of the RNC’s recent victory at the Supreme Court, which threw out a limit on how many candidates and political committees a donor can support in each election.
Richard L. Hasen, an election law professor at the UC Irvine School of Law, argued at the time that the decision, McCutcheon v. FEC, opened the door to a challenge to the soft-money ban by narrowing the definition of corruption.
Full Article: RNC files lawsuit seeking to raise unlimited sums.