Supreme Court Weighs Limits on Campaign Donations
Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon says he doesn’t want to give gobs of money to a single politician. Instead, he hopes to spread smaller contributions to as many candidates as possible.
If he has his way in a case headed to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, however, a single donor could contribute more than $3 million to a political party, its state and federal chapters and all of its federal candidates to shape next year’s midterm elections for Congress, campaign-finance watchdogs warn.
His case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, is the latest round in the bitter national battle over the role of money in American politics and the biggest challenge to campaign-finance rules since the court’s bombshell 2010 Citizens United decision ended restrictions on independent political spending by corporations and unions.