Issue One Statement on Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh

In light of President Trump nominating Brett Kavanaugh for Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Issue One Executive Director Meredith McGehee issued the following statement:

“In the wake of the wrongly-decided cases in Citizens United and SpeechNow v. FEC, Americans live in a political world where the law condones unlimited spending in campaigns, where money and speech are not just equated but have become synonymous, and where corporate (and by inference, union) treasury funds, mostly funneled through opaque organizations, have new rights to seek to influence the outcome of our elections. The train of jurisprudence during the Roberts Court era has left us with a political landscape where “dark money” organizations and super PACs dominate.  

Further, the transparency and independent spending promised in the Citizens United decision are nowhere to be found, in part due to the Congress and in part the feckless, deadlocked Federal Election Commission.  

Today, a tiny elite of deep-pocketed donors are dominating our elections, funding outside groups on the left and right that are too often run by surrogates of elected lawmakers, from the president on down.

It is in this context that the U.S. Senate must question Brett Kavanaugh as to his stance on issues related to money in politics disclosure and transparency, the true meaning of “independent spending” versus corruption and the appearance of corruption, and the First Amendment as related to its protection of political speech and the right of each American citizen to be heard in the political process.”