Nick Nyhart, Public Campaign Action Fund

This week’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court could add an ally of campaign finance reform to the nation’s highest judicial body. Sotomayor was a member of New York City’s Campaign Finance Board in its earliest days, helping establish the city’s successful system of publicly financed elections.

In a 1996 Suffolk Law Review article, co-authored with Nicole Gordon, the Board’s executive director at that time, Sotomayor writes:

“We would never condone private gifts to judges about to decide a case implicating the gift-givers’ interests. Yet our system of election financing permits extensive private, including corporate, financing of candidates’ campaigns, raising again and again the question what the difference is between contributions and bribes and how legislators or other officials can operate objectively on behalf of the electorate. Can elected officials say with credibility that they are carrying out the mandate of a ‘democratic’ society, representing only the general public good, when private money plays such a large role in their campaigns?”

Her confirmation would stand in contrast to the arrivals of Justices Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court. Both have taken a negative stance towards the regulation of campaign money. There’s more to see in this article from Politico.