John Edwards verdict could become part of Citizens United backlash

This week, 22 state attorneys general filed a legal brief supporting Montana's attempt to defend its local campaign-financing laws. A federal judge in Montana, citing Citizens, recently struck down a 100-year-old state law that limited independent campaign contributions. Defenders of campaign finance hope the Supreme Court might take the case to tweak Citizens.

The state is “facing an onslaught of secretive [groups] … trying to influence our elections while hiding being a curtain of anonymity,” John Doran, a spokesman for the Montana attorney general’s office, told the National Law Journal.

Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona, whose landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation was in large part nullified by Citizens United, added another brief in support of the Montana attorney general. He pushing back on Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's assertion, in Citizens, that money does not "give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption." 

"A problem does exist" where "so-called independent expenditures create a strong potential for corruption and the perception thereof," Senator McCain wrote.

According to polls, Americans are growing increasingly disenchanted with the proliferation of Citizens United-inspired super PACs – groups independent from candidates that can raise unlimited funds, which can be used to influence campaigns. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in March, nearly 70 percent of registered voters said they’d like to see super PACs banned.

“The extremes of Citizens United and the extremes of John Edwards may be equally condemned, but navigating toward the middle is difficult in today’s rhetoric-filled debate,” says Friedland.

After a 17-day trial, the defense said in closing arguments Thursday that Edwards committed sins, but no crimes. The prosecution argued that Edwards ignored his own “two Americas” campaign rhetoric by willfully corrupting federal campaign rules intended to level the playing field between individual voters and moneyed interests.

The jurors – a racially diverse mix of four women and eight men, including a financial analyst, a corporate vice president, a retired railroad engineer, and three mechanics – began their fourth day of deliberations on Wednesday, asking for copies of several exhibits from the trial.

To some observers, the weight of being arbiters of federal campaign law has begun to show on their faces.

Raleigh News & Observer correspondent Anne Blythe compared the jurors at the end of the trial – “a collegial group, laughing and talking” – to the way they appeared in court this week, where she described them as “somber-looking, barely looking at prosecutors or Edwards” as they waited for the judge to release them for lunch.

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