Campaign Finance

"Wheeling" is a term I just discovered. The context is that NJ governor Chris Christie made a campaign promise to deal with "wheeling," and then failed to, according to a South Jersey Times editorial yesterday. Here's how the editorial describes the practice (many NJ local governments prohibit or limit contributions from their contractors):...

The big news in the government ethics world this week is C.J. Roberts' opinion in the McCutcheon case. The biggest problem with this opinion is its author's continuation of an unrealistic picture of how large campaign contributions work. Roberts acts as if access were not an important goal, and as if the only problematic relationship between contributor and elected official involved quid pro...

According to Wikipedia, a Grand Unified Theory (GUT) is "a model in particle physics in which at high energy, the three gauge interactions of the Standard Model which define the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions, are merged into one single interaction."

It appears that the case of Michael Quinn Sullivan and his trio of...

Can anyone volunteer for a local political campaign without it being considered a contribution? Isn't it everyone's right to do so? Isn't this just about the most important thing a citizen can do, short of running for office herself?

According to the Toronto Metro News website last week, a "political strategist" and lobbyist who was...

I just finished reading the classic political science book Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City by Robert A. Dahl (Yale University Press, 1961). It might have been the second time around, because I did take an Urban Politics course forty years ago. The book happens to focus on New Haven, the city in whose suburbs I live and whose public campaign financing program I used to administer.
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While I was on vacation last week, the biggest story in local government ethics appears to have been, once again, in the District of Columbia. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia and the charges brought by the U.S. Attorney (attached; see below), the CEO...