On message

Let’s say you want to spend your own money on a TV commercial that will urge your fellow citizens not to vote for Candidate X. You want to air it widely enough to have an impact on the outcome of the election. But you’re not rich, so you get together with some friends and form a loose coalition.

Your group does not contribute to, or coordinate with, any campaign, nor does it accept contributions from labor unions or corporations. In fact, let’s imagine you’re so well-versed in the minutiae of campaign finance law that you even know to avoid such recondite infractions as hiring vendors with ties to politicians. So if you jumped through all those hoops, would you be allowed to air your ad? No, according to the 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act and a recent advisory opinion by the Federal Election Commission.

According to federal law, two or more people who combine resources to support or oppose a federal candidate become a “political committee” subject to government regulations and limits. But a lawsuit filed Thursday by the group SpeechNow.org, which had planned to air TV spots condemning Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) and Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), will reopen the question of how much freedom of speech must be curtailed in the name of legitimate campaign finance reform.

SpeechNow selected Landrieu and Burton because of their support of legislation that curtails political participation by public interest groups. The ads the FEC advised against were set up as a test case of the 1974 law, and the resulting Catch-22 tautology -- you can’t agitate effectively against political speech regulations because that would require you to oppose politicians who support those regulations, which would violate political speech regulations -- was a result SpeechNow had in mind. The advisory opinion by the commission’s general counsel seems well within the language of the law.

And that’s the problem. The FEC, and perhaps Congress, need to revisit the overreaching rules on campaign ads. Courts have repeatedly stated that the only compelling state interest in limiting political speech is to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption in government -- this was the idea when the McCain-Feingold law rightly banned soft-money donations to political parties. But that is very different from a group of unaffiliated citizens trying to have their say. SpeechNow’s suit against the FEC turns on complex regulations, but it speaks to something basic: the 1st Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

A victory for the group would restore some sanity to the campaign finance regulatory structure.