A memorial voicing opposition to the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling passed in the House during the 2012 New Mexico legislative session. New Mexico becomes the second state after Hawaii to pass legislation of this nature. Citizens United v. FEC is a 2010 Supreme Court ruling which held it unconstitutional to limit donations to political campaigns by corporations. The Daily Lobo talked with Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Bernalillo, who sponsored the legislation, House Memorial 4. The legislation passed the Senate as Senate Memorial 3.
Daily Lobo: What is the Citizens United v. FEC?
Mimi Stewart: The Citizens United ruling from the Supreme Court is allowing our elections to be taken over by billionaires. Their (Supreme Court) ruling, which says that a corporation can spend just like an individual person, means we have unlimited, unregulated and undeclared campaign money put into the electoral process.
DL: What is an example of this happening in politics today?
MS: You only have to look at the Republican primary to see what is going on. You have a bidding war between billionaires of who can put the most money into these super PACs, which are independent expenditures which can raise and spend unlimited amount of money for candidates.
DL: How is Citizens United v. FEC overturning past legislation?
MS: People have always thought that there is too much money in politics and that we need to regulate money in politics. What the Citizens United ruling did, is all of that regulation and good campaign finance reform is out the window.
Where is the money coming from, who is contributing, how much and under what purpose? It completely overturns the campaign laws we have put in place. Elections are going to become just how much money do you have and no regard to what your values are, what you stand for and what kind of regulation or policy you want to change or put forward?
DL: Why is this House Memorial 4 important?
MS: It’s important that every state starts badgering Congress to send us a constitutional amendment to overturn the law we have changed. Bad Supreme Court decisions have been changed seven times in the past 100 years, including letting women vote, letting black people vote and taking away poll tax on minority voters in the south. When the Supreme Court makes a bad decision this is a natural occurrence that the citizens rise up and try to overturn the ruling and put in place something that makes more sense.
DL: What does your memorial exactly put in place?
MS: My memorial in both the House and the Senate requests that we put the ability in the Constitution for the citizens through their elected officials to regulate campaign finance spending.
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DL: Why was New Mexico one of the first states to pass this and what is being done nationally?
MS: These talks are happening all over the place. It’s been introduced in at least 25 states right now; New Mexico just has an extremely short legislative session so we were the first to pass it in the (continental) United States. We had to do it quick because our session is over. Most states don’t have this extremely abbreviated legislative session.
