On October 16, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Roberts ruled that the Federal Election Commission was correct, when it ruled in 2006 that no one can give Unity08 more than $5,000. Unity08 v FEC, 07-53, District of Columbia. Here is the 19-page decision.

Unity08 was established in May 2006 to qualify itself as a political party in as many states as possible, so that a centrist presidential candidate might be chosen in June 2008 in the group’s on-line presidential primary. Because Unity08 would already have qualified itself for the ballot in most states (as a qualified party), the person chosen for president by Unity08 would then enjoy the ballot access that Unity08 had previously earned. The founders of Unity08 were always careful not to express a preference for any particular presidential candidate. However, after Unity08 abandoned its goal on January 10, 2008, Unity08 spokesman Doug Bailey promptly joined the movement to persuade Mayor Mike Bloomberg to run for president as an independent. That just confirmed what most people had long suspected, that Unity08 had been designed to help Bloomberg become president. It is in this context that the U.S. District Court decision must be understood.

Federal campaign laws limit contributions to national political parties to $28,000 (it goes up every year at the rate of inflation). Federal campaign laws also limit contributions to “political committees” to only $5,000. In late 2006, the FEC had ruled that Unity08 is a “political committee”, and therefore no one could give it more than $5,000. This ruling crippled Unity08. Unity08 had argued that it should be treated like a political party. Alternatively, Unity08 had argued that, no matter what it was, it was not a “political committee”, because a “political committee” is something that has a “major purpose” of working for a particular candidate for federal office. Unity08 depended on a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, that said a 1979 committee to draft Ted Kennedy for president was not a “political committee”, because there was no assurance that Kennedy would run. Therefore, if a draft committee to persuade a particular person to run is not covered by the $5,000 limit, it seems obvious that Unity08, which (formally speaking) had no one in particular in mind, is also not a “political committee.”

Nevertheless, Judge Roberts said Unity08 is a “political committee.” The ruling is senseless unless one assumes that Unity08 was “really” supporting Bloomberg for president all along. The whole purpose of restrictions on donations is to avoid bribery. One could plausibly argue that a big donor to Unity08 could be suspected of trying to bribe Bloomberg, only if one assumes that Unity08 all along was just a committee supporting Bloomberg. The biggest weakness in the decision is this sentence: “However, Unity08 will be providing resources that are certain to benefit candidates who will be identified.” Obviously, it was not certain that Unity08 spending was going to benefit any candidate, since, in the end, Unity08 didn’t even nominate anyone for president.

Unity08 is appealing the decision. In retrospect, Unity08 would have been smarter if it had proclaimed itself (at its founding, in 2006) to be a new political party, and had not said that it would necessarily nominate anyone for president. If it had just declared itself a new party, with a platform, but had said nothing about which offices it would nominate for, then there would have been no evidence at all that it was supporting a particular presidential or congressional candidate, and the FEC would have had no ability to limit contributions to it at all. The law limiting contributions to national political parties only applies to groups that have “national committee status”, and the FEC only gives such status to groups that have already run candidates for federal office. For example, the Green Party didn’t get “national committee status” until 2001, after it had run two presidential campaigns.