Not Ready For Ron

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with the Federal Election Commission that rules governing in-kind contributions applied to an effort on behalf of a certain Florida Governor.

READY FOR RON (“RFR”) is a political committee that has spent more than $1 million soliciting and gathering signatures and contact information from over 200,000 people who have declared themselves “Ready for Ron.” Dkt. 1 at 5 (Compl. ¶ 6); Dkt. 17 at 8. RFR would like to deliver the “petition” that it has created to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, along with a letter urging him to become a candidate for the Republican nomination for President in the 2024 election. Dkt. 1 at 7 (Compl. ¶ 17). Before taking this step, however, RFR sought an advisory opinion from the Federal Election Commission (“FEC” or “Commission”) addressing whether and when it could do so consistent with the federal campaign finance laws. Dkt. 23-2 at 1. According to RFR, presenting Governor DeSantis with a “petition” would constitute pure political speech beyond the constitutional or statutory reach of these laws. Id. at 12–13.

The FEC declined to bless RFR’s proposal.

Holding

As explained below, the Court agrees with the Commission that what RFR calls a petition is, in fact, a contact list and, more importantly, an in-kind contribution. As such, the list is subject to the contribution limits contained in the Federal Election Campaign Act (“FECA” or the “Act”), 52 U.S.C. §§ 30101 et seq., and it is now well-trod ground that those limits satisfy constitutional dictates. Finally, although the Commission did not entirely resolve the question, the Court concludes that it makes no difference whether Governor DeSantis has declared his candidacy, whether he has invoked the regulatory exception for “testing the waters,” or whether he has done neither at the point at which he accepts RFR’s contact list. By accepting the list, he would necessarily commit himself to either a candidacy or testing the waters, both of which require contributors (including in-kind contributors) to comply with FECA’s contribution limitations. To hold otherwise would invite massive evasion of the campaign finance laws by allowing those seeking office simply to wait to declare their candidacies or to invoke the testing-the-waters exception until after they have assembled war-chests of non-FECA-compliant contributions. Congress precluded circumvention of this type by defining a candidate as anyone who receives “contributions aggregating in excess of $5,000,” 52 U.S.C. § 30101(2)(A), and by defining a “contribution” to include “any gift . . . of money or anything of value made by any person for the purposes of influencing any election for Federal office,” id. § 30101(8)(A)(i).

Judge Randolph Moss authored the opinion. (Mike Frisch)