A conservative legal foundation on Wednesday asked federal regulators to give a green light to corporations and unions to begin spending their treasuries to influence this year's congressional elections.
The James Madison Center for Free Speech asked the Federal Election Commission to formally throw out its rules that restrict corporate and union spending on politics, saying the step is needed to implement last week's Supreme Court decision that freed such groups to get more directly involved in election campaigns.
"This is an election year," said James Bopp, the center's attorney. "Speakers will want to exercise the First Amendment rights to political speech" outlined in last week's decision, he said, "so the FEC should adopt these regulations quickly."
Without a formal declaration by the FEC, Bopp said, advocacy groups will be hesitant to take full advantage of the new leeway the Supreme Court granted in last week's controversial 5-4 ruling, fearing they might be subject to enforcement action.
"The FEC needs to acknowledge that the corporate prohibition is no longer enforceable, and to repeal other regulations that are based on that," he said. "Until they say 'uncle," people are still worried."
The first wave of new players in politics is likely to be nonprofit advocacy groups that seek to inject their issues into election campaigns. Bopp predicted it would be groups such as AARP or the National Right to Life Committee.
Copyright 2010 AP News
