(Above: Yellowhammer CEO Cliff Sims interviews Shaun McCutcheon)
Shaun McCutcheon hadn’t gotten much sleep when he strolled into The Club, a members-only establishment perched atop Red Mountain in the Birmingham suburb of Homewood, Friday afternoon around 2 p.m.
“Do you know where I can get some coffee?” He asked as Yellowhammer’s video crew assembled a makeshift set. “I worked through the night last night. Had a little bit of an emergency, but we got it taken care of.”
McCutcheon is one of the hottest interviews in American politics right now. His name has been a headline in every major publication in the United States. He was the featured guest on the longest-running television series in broadcasting history. Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who spent $100 million on the last presidential race, recently requested an audience with him. His e-book, Outsider Inside the Supreme Court, is out today. And he’s being courted to chair numerous non-profit organizations that advocate for freedom of speech.
But he hasn’t allowed the whirlwind of attention to keep him away from his “day job” for too long. Back in Alabama and out of the deafening roar of the D.C. political class, McCutcheon is going about his day-to-day life running his wildly successful engineering firm, Coalmont Electrical Development Corporation.
When the Supreme Court of the United States announced its decision on the case bearing his name, McCutcheon was working on the electrical system of a Tennessee steel mill. The work site was so loud that he didn’t even notice his phone ringing off the hook. When he finally saw the dozens of missed calls, he listened to the messages informing him that he had won. He celebrated for a moment, then went back to work.
His aw shucks demeanor and small business background made him an ideal spokesperson for the extremely contentious debate surrounding the fundamental question of when free speech ends and corruption begins. He laughs off the smear campaigns that have been launched against him. There are numerous websites entirely devoted to attacking him personally.
As we chatted on Friday, he seemed simultaneously amused and bewildered by the attention as he scrolled through the #McCutcheon hashtag on Twitter.
“That Colbert guy is my favorite,” McCutcheon said of Stephen Colbert, host of the late-night satirical Comedy Central show The Colbert Report. “He’s been pretty funny in his tweets about my case.”
People are worried that the McCutcheon ruling will bring change to politics. But it will mostly bring large bills and checks.
— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) April 4, 2014
The “McCutcheon” name is now to political consultants and candidates what “Roe” is to abortion advocates, “Miranda” is to criminal defense attorneys, and “Brown” is to civil rights activists.
But most people still don’t entirely understand what all the fuss is about. The soundbites have devolved into “democracy for sale” on one side and “freedom of speech” on the other. In reality, it’s much more nuanced than that, as are most cases that rise to the Supreme Court.
Political donors are currently subject to limits on the amount of money they can contribute to candidates. $5,200 is the most a donor can give to any one candidate — $2,600 in the primary and another $2,600 in the general. That’s called the “base limit.” This number is the amount of money the Federal Election Commission believes protects donors’ First Amendment right to engage in the political process, while remaining below the threshold at which a donor could “buy” too much influence with a candidate or elected official.
But on top of the base limit, there is also a cap on the total sum of money a donor can donate to federal campaigns in general. It’s called the “aggregate limit,” and it’s set at $123,200.
At least it was until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in McCutcheon v. FEC that the aggregate limit is unconstitutional.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion.
“The government has a strong interest… in combatting corruption and its appearance,” Roberts wrote. “We have, however, held that this interest must be limited to a specific kind of corruption — quid pro quo corruption — in order to ensure that the government’s efforts do not have the effect of restricting the First Amendment right of citizens to choose who shall govern them.”
In other words, the high court ruled that limiting the total amount of money American citizens can give to a wide range of candidates is a violation of their First Amendment Rights. The individual limit of $5,200, however, stays in place.
McCutcheon’s allies have argued that lifting the aggregate limit would help quell the growing power of Super PACs, which can raise and spend an unlimited amount of money as long as they don’t “coordinate” with a specific campaign. The age of Super PACs was ushered in by another controversial Supreme Court decision, Citizens United.
Critics of the Court’s ruling say it will allow a small number of big donors to have an outsized impact on federal elections.
But regardless of one’s position on the Supreme Court’s decision, it’s impossible to deny its impact on the political process.
Shaun McCutcheon sat down with Yellowhammer this week for our weekly interview feature, “The Exchange.” You can check out the interview above, and let us know what you think in the comment section below or by tweeting us @YHPolitics.
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
