The confirmation hearings of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court brought many strange statements and questions by Democratic senators, such as Sen. Mazie Hirono asking Barrett if she’d ever sexually assaulted someone. However, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s remarks stand out as the most conspiratorial.
On Tuesday, the Rhode Island Democrat seemed to make a Glenn Beck impression of yesteryear by pushing a narrative that the judge’s confirmation and the Supreme Court’s supposed rightward lurch are the results of years of conservative “dark money” efforts to influence the courts. This paranoid assault on political speech needs to be put to rest. The United States’s philanthropic culture is one of the hallmarks of our democracy and has been used to advance policy for the better on both the Left and Right.
First, as the Wall Street Journal noted in two editorials last month, it’s highly ironic that Whitehouse has elected himself the whistleblower in chief for “dark money” when he has connections to several multimillion-dollar nonprofit organizations on the Left. While it’s difficult to do a comprehensive side-by-side comparison of political donations, NBC News’s research suggests the Left is starting to surpass the Right on fundraising through these vehicles: “The limited picture that has emerged so far in 2020 shows $14.2 million in dark money has been spent supporting Democrats or against Republicans versus $9.8 million to support Republicans or attack Democrats, according to Open Secrets.” Donor privacy is cherished by both sides of the aisle, as well it should be, considering the noble political causes that have been funded anonymously.
As Daniel Suhr, a senior associate attorney at the Liberty Justice Center, pointed out in the Wall Street Journal this week, none other than Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg owes her early career in large part to dark money:
In 1956, Alabama famously tried to prevent a dark-money group from meddling in its politics, a case that went all the way up to the Supreme Court. That group was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, better known as the NAACP, and the political battle was the civil rights movement.
As I’ve pointed out in the Washington Examiner before, money cannot legally buy election results. Campaigns, nonprofit organizations, and super PACs can promote a candidate or a cause, but it’s up to the voters to decide the outcome — hence how President Trump won the election in 2016 despite being outspent by then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by almost double.
The same principles apply for Supreme Court nominees. While Whitehouse made a big fuss on Tuesday about the supposed “80 to zero” track record of the Supreme Court siding with conservative causes, he conveniently left out landmark rulings expanding gay marriage nationwide and upholding Obamacare. Sure, donors can support efforts to confirm who they think will be conservative judges like Barrett, but there is no guarantee that they will get their money’s worth on key issues.
Lastly, as someone who is a fundraiser with ties to what some would label “dark money,” I’d like to point out what a cynical view of humanity the attack on donor privacy is. The underlying perspective of the attack seems to be that political actors do not have ethics or deeply held beliefs but rather are simply pawns for any payer’s game. The fact of the matter is that most activists on both the Left and the Right have genuine beliefs and a constitutional right to petition their government. This is something that should be celebrated, not condemned, as a feature of a free society.
What’s “dark” is not the money that flows into politics but rather the view of fellow citizens that some like Whitehouse seem to have. The U.S. is the most generous country when it comes to charitable giving. Moreover, the results of this philanthropy have pushed society forward, from the civil rights movement onward. Let’s not let scare tactics sacrifice our nation’s great legacy.
Casey Given (@CaseyJGiven) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the executive director of Young Voices.
