TeeVee political ads
So last night on the TeeVee, there were wall to wall Ford and Corker commercials. Each candidate bad-mouthed the other. Yawn. Then, a commercial blasting Ford as the most liberal congressman in Tennessee came on. The commercial was put out by some Republican organization (I can’t recall which). I thought McCain-Feingold prohibited that. Or is there an exception for political parties?
September 13th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Is it because Ford doesn’t currently occupy the office for which he’s running? I was curious about that myself.
September 13th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
I thought McCain-Feingold only applied to federal elections.
September 13th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
There is no such thing as a Federal Election unless you are talking about the Delegates to the Electoral College casting a State’s Electoral votes.
McCain-Feingold applies to elections for Federal Office which includes congress.
Perhaps the group that ran the ad is a 527 which (if I remember correctly) are exempt from the provisions of McCain-Feingold (for now). Of course if the group touted itself as a Republican organization, it couldn’t very well consider itself non-partisan (a 527 requirement) so maybe it was something else entirely.
We mere mortals cannot possibly be expected to decipher the nuances and detect the penumbras of a subject as obviously beyond our powers of comprehension as campaign finance law.
September 13th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
Well, congress can’t figure it out either. I remember hearing that they had to hire in legal advisors to explain the law back to them before their next election after they had passed it.
Can’t dig up a link to that though. Anybody else remember this or have a link?
September 13th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Well, in AZ we have a Senatorial incumbent and a challenger going at each other every commercial break like the hammers of hell, so I am totally confuzzed…
September 14th, 2006 at 8:39 am
The law never effectively banned campaign advertising. If it did, the Supreme Court would have overturned it 9-0. What it does is to require anyone other than a candidate or a recognized party to work through a front group that files lots of paperwork. It’s a way of discouraging the little people…