Senator Hawley will soon introduce a bill designed to overturn a landmark Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which since the 5–4 decision was issued in January 2010 has opened the floodgates to corporate spending in American elections. Mr. Hawley says in an interview with RealClearPolitics that granting free speech rights to corporations would be an alien concept to the Founders. “I am an originalist and I don’t think you can make an originalist case for business corporations being treated like individuals when it comes to the right to political speech,” Mr. Hawley says. “My goal is to get corporate money out of our politics.”Missouri’s senior senator says his legislation would ban publicly traded corporations from making donations to both candidates and political action committees. The bill would also bar corporations from paying for political advertisements and “other electioneering communications.”On Tuesday, Senator McConnell reportedly lashed out at Mr. Hawley for his legislation, according to Punchbowl News. Mr. Hawley, who narrowly won his Senate race in 2018 thanks to the help from outside spending groups, should not turn his back on those donors and corporations who helped drag him over the finish line, the Senate Republican leader reportedly told him. Mr. McConnell also warned senators at their closed-door luncheon that anyone who joins with Mr. Hawley in his effort will “get heavy incoming from the right.”Mr. Hawley served as his state’s attorney general for two years after clerking for Chief Justice Roberts and attending Yale Law School. He is part of the new populist, nationalist wing of the GOP, which includes members like Senator Vance. Mr. Hawley previously voted to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, has embraced President Trump’s trade policies, and has claimed international corporations are among the greatest enemies to the average American worker. “That is not a reason in-and-of-itself to get the Constitution right,” he says of limiting corporate speech in American elections. “This isn’t a game that is good for anybody,” and “most importantly, the voters don’t benefit from it.”The legislation, though, is unlikely to move through Congress any time soon. Most Democrats have long pushed for ending the landmark precedent via federal legislation, but Republicans — as well as some Democrats on the Hill — have never shown interest in challenging the ruling. Senator Shaheen, along with Senators Schumer and Lujan, proposed a 28th Amendment to the Constitution last month that would have overturned Citizens United, but the legislation has yet to move out of committee.“Our democracy suffers when the voices of our citizens are drowned out by dark money from wealthy individuals and corporate interests,” Ms. Shaheen says. “I’m reintroducing this Constitutional amendment to overturn the disastrous Citizens United decision and return the power to the American people in our elections.” Ms. Shaheen has 31 co-sponsors for her amendment, all of whom are Democrats. She falls far short of the 67 requisite votes to move a proposed constitutional amendment through the upper chamber. While Democrats have railed against the decision for more than a decade, they are the party that has benefited most from corporate and Super PAC involvement in American elections. Since 2018, the Democratic Party has raised and dispersed more corporate and anonymous money than the Republicans in the last two of three biannual national elections. In 2022, Republicans narrowly outspent Democrats, at $4.2 billion nationwide when one accounts for spending by individual candidates, state and national parties, and outside groups, according to the database Open Secrets, which tracks donations and spending in elections. Last year, Democrats spent more than $4 billion. Super PAC spending alone has exploded in recent years. In 2020, more than $2.6 billion was spent on that year’s elections, compared to $1.4 billion in 2020 and $1 billion in 2012, the first presidential election year following the Citizens United decision. Before that, the 2008 election saw Super PAC spending of a few hundred million dollars.
