If the reports are true that newly-minted California Democratic Congressman Jerry McNerney is the #1 target of national Republicans to retake this central California Congressional seat formerly held by Richard Pombo, then a decision by a Federal court yesterday emasculating much of the McCain-Feingold soft money restrictions could mean that McNerney will be in for a "soft money" brusing.
The Federal case, brought by Wisconsin Right to Life, challenged the portion of the McCain-Feingold reforms that restricts "issue ads" in the final days of a Federal election campaign. McCain-Feingold, as previously upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, essentially bans use of "soft money" (corporate or union funds) for any mass media advertisement in the final 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election that mentions a candidate’s name, even if the ad doesn’t specifically include words of advocacy such as "vote for," or "vote against." Wisconsin Right to Life claimed the law restricted their ability to criticize Wisconsin’s U.S. Senators by name for their votes on abortion legislation. A Federal Court agreed that the McCain-Feingold law limited the Plantiff’s speech rights under the First Amendment and declared the portion of the law challenged unconstitutional.
Now the case will surely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court — the same court that approved McCain-Feingold in the first place. But legal observers are beginning to say that the new Supreme Court line-up, with Alito replacing O’Connor, may just result in some back-tracking by the Court, and this portion of McCain-Feingold may indeed be upheld as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Should that happen, McCain-Feingold will have been gutted, and the only thing to have really been accomplished through all the legal wrangling in the last few years over regulation of so-called "527 committees" will be that their contributions and expenditures must be disclosed.
Getting back to McNerney, now that he is a member of Congress, he will have to start building a voting record. As a freshman Congressman from the same state as Speaker Pelosi, he will surely be dragged into many partisan votes by Pelosi and his fellow liberal urban Democrats that will be completely out of sync with his more conservative, rural and suburban California district. Those votes will be fair game for issue-oriented attack ads funded by soft money. Not just for a little while, but all the way up to election day, 2008.