Taking Issue with Issue Advocacy

Abstract

Professor Lillian BeVier has written a provocative article that reemphasizes and extends many of her well-known, laissez-faire ideas about campaign finance. I am most persuaded by her argument that recent efforts to distinguish election-related and political spending would not by themselves be sufficient to avoid the far-reaching analysis of Buckley v. Valeo. Professor BeVier's larger and more important thesis, however, is that the arguments of "regulationists" for restricting issue advocacy are both theoretically and empirically deficient. In this Comment, I wish to do three things: (1) criticize Professor BeVier's "negative liberty" theory; (2) criticize some of her more specific arguments about inequality and accountability; and (3) suggest that mandating partial anonymity might be a better solution to the "problem" of issue advocacy. I will try to be brief.