Group seeks to free up political contributions by businesses in Mass.
For years, the unique political financing opportunities enjoyed by unions has been a target of Republican criticism.
Now two conservative businessmen and an Arizona advocacy group are seeking to let corporations play by that same set of rules that allows labor unions to donate $15,000 to one candidate in a year.
The Goldwater Institute on Tuesday asked Suffolk Superior Court Judge Linda Giles to grant a preliminary injunction, temporarily halting the restrictions in Massachusetts against corporate political giving.
"Government can't pick winners and losers in the political marketplace," Jim Manley, senior attorney at the Goldwater Institute, told reporters in the State House before the hearing. He said, "The government can't elevate one voice over another through campaign finance laws that discriminate."
Assistant Attorney General William Porter, the chief of the attorney general's administrative law division, said federal campaign finance regulations and several states bar direct political contributions from businesses.
Manley said that in other states and at the federal level, businesses have the option to establish and help administer their own political action committees, while in Massachusetts a business PAC can only be established by employees of the corporation, which in Massachusetts cannot spend corporate dollars on the overhead of those political groups.
Businesses can seek to influence elections through so-called super PACs, which are independent of campaigns, said Porter, who said the ban merely prevents businesses from directly underwriting others' political speech.
Giles, who began the hearing by commenting that Manley had a "tough road to hoe," said she would take the matter under advisement.
"Now it falls to me to do my homework," Giles said at the end of the hearing.
The crux of Manley's argument is that unions enjoy special rules, which allow them to donate up to $15,000 to one political candidate in a year. Individuals are limited to $1,000. Labor groups from Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin made $15,000 donations to Marty Walsh's successful Boston mayoral campaign in 2013.
"When I saw that, I said this is just not right," said Paul Craney, executive director of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, a conservative group that engages in some political activity. The Goldwater Institute is representing MassFiscal Chairman Rick Green, who is president of 1A Auto Inc., and 126 Self Storage owner Michael Kane, who is clerk and director for MassFiscal, a nonprofit.
"I can't compete with unions from Chicago, Washington, D.C., Minnesota. Somehow they have more say in Massachusetts politics than I do," Kane told reporters after the hearing in Suffolk Superior Court.
Kane and Green asked Goldwater for help with a lawsuit after Craney made an introduction.
Describing himself politically as a "small government person, a less government person" who favors liberty and disapproves of overregulation, Kane said party affiliation doesn't dictate his contributions. He noted he has given to Sen. Karen Spilka, an Ashland Democrat who is now chairwoman of Senate Ways and Means, and said the senator would be meeting with his business group on Tuesday night.
A Spilka aide confirmed the senator would attend the monthly meeting of the Ashland Business Association.
Pam Wilmot, executive director of the good government group Common Cause Massachusetts, said unions should be held to the same $1,000 annual contribution limit as individuals, though she said allowing businesses to directly contribute to campaigns would lead to an influx of political dollars and potential corruption.
"Corporations would be much, much, much more powerful in the Massachusetts political process. I think we'd see more corruption. Fifteen thousand dollars is a lot of money in Massachusetts politics," Wilmot said.
"This would just give a voice to people who are voiceless in the political process," said Craney.
Wilmot said the $15,000 cap on direct contributions from a union was a policy decision made by the Office of Campaign and Political Finance more than 25 years ago.
"That $15,000 thing is something the campaign finance office came up with in 1988," Wilmot said. "It was totally out of thin air."
While she opposes the $15,000 limit on union contributions, Wilmot said she supports the statute and said unions should be treated differently than corporations.
"Unions are limited in how much they can proliferate. There's a whole organization process. Corporations can endlessly divide. There's no limitation," Wilmot said. Saying the courts have upheld the ability to treat corporations differently from others, Wilmot said union members can get a portion of their dues returned to them if they do not approve of the group's political activity.
Manley noted that corporate shareholders can sell their shares if they disagree with a company's political decisions.
An issue for the Supreme Court?
"We may need to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to get this issue resolved," said Manley, who said his group - named after U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican nominee for president - had recently brought a similar challenge in Kentucky.
"I think that's what they want to happen," Wilmot said of the potential that the case reaches the highest court in the land.
The U.S. Supreme Court has opened up the playing field for political dollars in recent years. Manley's brief cites Citizens United, a case that has drawn howls of protest from liberals as it allowed unlimited outside expenditures by groups in political campaigns.
Wilmot said the ability for unions to donate $15,000 to a campaign has never been challenged in the courts, and she was doubtful the result of the Goldwater lawsuit would affect that limit.
"The Legislature has looked at it at various times and refused to change it," Wilmot said.
The matter is now before Giles, who had a bit role herself in last year's electoral process when she rejected a legal move by independent gubernatorial candidate Evan Falchuk, who was seeking inclusion in an October debate.
One of former Gov. William Weld's first judicial nominations in 1991, Giles at the time of her nomination was a private attorney and volunteered legal service for the AIDS Action Committee and the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders.
In the 1940s, the Supreme Judicial Court prevented a proposed ballot measure that would have banned unions from making political contributions, Manley told reporters.
Manley said the situation is reversed in New Hampshire, where unions are barred from giving.
"Hey, if a union president knocks on my door I'm willing to talk to him about that," said Manley when asked if he planned to bring a suit in the Granite State. "I think it's just as unfair what's going on in New Hampshire."
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