NRSC v. FEC ruling is a victory for free speech

OPINION:

For decades, federal law limited how closely we as a political party could work with our own candidates — the very people we exist to help elect.

The restriction was ridiculous. Late last month, the Supreme Court ruled in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission that those caps were unconstitutional, striking them down in a decisive victory for free speech.

The First Amendment was written to protect political speech, not to ration it. No speech is more central to a political party than the speech we use in standing behind the candidates we nominate.

For years, an outdated set of rules treated that basic act as something to be restrained and policed.

Consider how it actually worked: A political party could raise money to help a candidate, but the law strictly capped how much it could spend in coordination with that candidate’s campaign. This cap applied to everything, including advertising and door-knocking.

In a typical House race this year, that ceiling was just $65,300, even though winning a competitive seat now routinely costs millions of dollars. The party’s only option beyond that cap was to spend on its own. The party was legally barred from coordinating with the very candidate it was trying to elect.

The result was exactly as backward as it sounds. The group most accountable to its own voters and members was restricted from helping its candidates win.

The Supreme Court has now made clear what should have been obvious all along: The government has no business telling a party how much it can spend supporting its own candidates.

That was why the Republican National Committee fought to have these limits overturned. The RNC filed a friend-of-the-court brief last year in support of the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s challenge that led to this ruling.

The old system tied our hands and pushed money into the shadows. The money flowed instead to outside groups that answer to no one. When the RNC invests directly in a candidate, we answer to our members, donors and grassroots supporters. Every dollar is accounted for and publicly disclosed.

This decision also means that every dollar the RNC spends on Republican candidates now does more. Because our ability to coordinate directly with candidates is no longer restricted, we can put resources exactly where they are needed most: in advertising, voter contact, get-out-the-vote operations and a single unified campaign strategy.

We stretch every dollar further than any outside group can. That is real help for Republican candidates running in the races that will decide whether we win in November.

From Day 1 of this election cycle, the RNC has been disciplined with every dollar — spending wisely and carrying no debt — so that the moment these limits fell, we would be ready to put our full resources behind our candidates.

Today, the RNC holds more than $125 million in the bank and owes nothing, while the Democratic National Committee is essentially broke.

That advantage was built on purpose, and now we will use it.

As we head into the midterm election season, we will do more than ever before to support Republican candidates in every corner of the country. We will compete hard in the battleground states and the toughest races. We will leave nothing on the field and do everything in our power to protect our majorities and deliver on President Trump’s “America First” mandate.

• Joe Gruters is chairman of the Republican National Committee.