Lawmakers aim to limit corporate election campaigning
from the News Tribune:Several Alaska lawmakers introduced bills Friday aimed at limiting the role of corporations in elections, a move that comes a month after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state and federal bans on corporate and union spending for political candidates.
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Sen. Hollis French and Reps. Scott Kawasaki and Les Gara, all Democrats, introduced the four related bills. Two of the measures directly challenge the legal notion that corporations are people and therefore have political free speech rights — a key argument in the court’s decision. The bills state that for-profit corporations are not people with regard to influencing elections.
“Here in Alaska, we’ve have seen far too clearly the corrupting influence corporations can have when they decide to get too closely involved in the political process,” French said, referring to the case of an oil services executive who was sentenced to federal prison last year for bribing state lawmakers.
The bills won’t have an immediate practical effect but should send a message to the Supreme Court and set up the legal framework to have it consider reversing its decision in future years, French said. That message will get louder as more states follow suit, Kawasaki said.
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