The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.13           March 31, 1997 
 
 
SWP Wins Extension Of Campaign Rights  

BY GREG McCARTAN
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Federal Election Commission has granted campaign committees supporting Socialist Workers Party candidates a six-year extension of their exemption from reporting the names of financial contributors to the government.

The ruling came at an FEC meeting here March 6 in response to a request filed with the commission by the socialists last November. Constitutional rights attorney Michael Krinsky prepared the extensive legal and factual papers backing the petition for continued exemption from the financial disclosure requirements. Krinsky is a partner in the New York firm of Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky, and Lieberman.

For the first time since the SWP's initial victory in 1979 over the federal government's undemocratic reporting procedure, however, the FEC imposed a restriction on the exemption. The commission ruled that the SWP campaign committee must now assign "a code number for each contributor and [report] that code number when disclosing a contribution by that person." At the March 6 hearing, FEC attorney Jonathan Levin said he would recommend extending that onerous procedure to others currently exempted from federal reporting requirements.

Quarter-century battle
Since 1971, the U.S. government has required all federal candidates and campaign committees to file frequent and detailed reports identifying contributors of more than $200, as well as those who are paid for rent, printing, and other services. Reports are required to list the name, addresses, and occupation of the contributor as well as the amount contributed. These reports are open to the public.

From the outset, Socialist Workers campaign committees have refused to comply with these procedures and have mounted a legal and political battle to defend the right of privacy of those who contribute to SWP election efforts. Since party members and supporters have long been targeted by government police agencies and rightist outfits, the SWP has argued that disclosing the names of contributors would simply constitute a ready-made "enemies list."

The SWP explained that its advocacy of a workers and farmers government and of socialism; its participation in the union movement and labor struggles; and its involvement in the fight against imperialist wars, for Black rights, women's equality, and the rights of the foreign-born resulted in a decades-long U.S. government disruption program against it going back to the build-up for World War II. The party and its supporters have also been the target of threats and attacks by right-wing individuals and organizations, employers, the police, and state and local governments.

Disclosure of the names of contributors to SWP election campaigns, the party argues, would hand a further weapon to the government, bosses, and rightist outfits to wield against those who oppose their policies.

The fight for exemption from disclosure was part of a broader campaign by the party to maximize the political space the workers movement can use to organize and engage in struggle. As the material submitted to the FEC this year makes clear, the SWP runs candidates in elections across the country, actively distributes socialist publications and revolutionary books, maintains public offices around the country, and functions in the labor and other mass movements.

By 1979 the public campaign and court rulings had established that the financial disclosure law, as applied to the SWP, was a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of association and privacy. This year's Federal Election Commission ruling, known as an advisory opinion, is built on those victories.

Some 70 incidents documented
In their submission, the socialists provided extensive documentation of incidents of harassment and threats from 1990, the time of the last FEC ruling, through the end of 1996.

This year's FEC advisory opinion notes the SWP has "provided descriptions with supporting signed declarations or other documentation as to approximately 70 incidents of harassment, many from private sources that include acts of vandalism against SWP offices and SWP-related bookstores; threat and acts of violence from persons identifying themselves as members of the Ku Klux Klan; threats and acts of violence by anti-Castro activists; negative actions by, or statements from, employers against persons apparently as a result of those persons' association with the SWP; and abusive behavior toward SWP candidates or other persons publicly associating with the SWP."

The ruling also notes "documentation of approximately 20 incidents involving police interactions with SWP workers." It says that the "incidents sometimes appear to involve actions by the police that were apparently motivated by a hostile feeling toward the SWP or views expressed by the SWP."

The FEC concluded from these cases that the "SWP and persons publicly associated with it have experienced a significant amount of harassment form private sources in the 1990-1996 period," and that, "such harassment appears to have been intended to intimidate the SWP and persons associated with it from engaging in their political activities and in expressing their political views. The opinion added that there is "also evidence of continuing harassment by local police."

At the same time, the new ruling states that "the hostility from other governmental sources appears to have abated." It says that the documentation submitted by the SWP "does not present evidence [similar to that in the party's 1990 petition] indicating negative attitudes toward the SWP" on the part of federal government agencies.

The SWP's attorney Michael Krinsky replied to their claim in a written comment on a draft of the advisory opinion that FEC attorneys had supplied to the SWP less than a week prior to the March 6 hearing.

Ongoing dangers from Washington
Krinsky pointed out that the SWP's petition for a renewal of its exemption had reviewed the extensive documentation of federal government spying unearthed as a result of a historic lawsuit filed by the SWP against the FBI and other government agencies and the political campaign that accompanied it. In 1986 federal Judge Thomas Griesa ruled in favor of the SWP, finding that the FBI had engaged in a decades-long pattern of activity that violated the constitutional rights of the SWP and Young Socialists Alliance, their members, and supporters.

Krinsky wrote in the November request that "the past history of the federal activities against the SWP remains relevant... given its long duration, extraordinary intensity, and gross illegality.... It is hardly surprising," he wrote, "that the history of FBI disruption, warrantless burglaries, warrantless wiretaps, informant penetration, and the like, still intimidates and still hampers the ability of the SWP to solicit contributions and to engage in educational and political activities."

The SWP's petition for an extension also presented evidence of continued federal animus toward the party and its supporters since 1990. It cited three recent cases:

Priscilla Schenk, a unionist and SWP campaign supporter in Iowa, was interrogated by the Secret Service at her workplace in 1991 about her political views.

Milton Chee, a production worker at the Alameda Naval Air Station in California, was subjected by his employer to campaign of harassment culminating in a Hatch Act investigation in 1992.

Jason Coughlin had his security clearance pulled and was reassigned from his job as a computer programmer by the Air Force after he attended a socialist conference in 1991.

The draft FEC advisory opinion said the SWP has failed to provide "complete information" about the Chee and Coughlin cases on the basis of which evidence of ongoing federal harassment could be substantiated.

"The draft opinion fails to note," Krinsky wrote in his March 4 reply to the commission, "that Chee was first questioned by the Navy about political speech, his distribution of a flier for a `Militant Labor Forum' event. It fails to note that Chee was twice formally cautioned against `passing out literature of a political nature,' supposedly a violation of Navy regulations concerning `contraband material.' "

Krinsky also supplied additional documentation concerning the character of the "extensive interrogations [of Chee] on two occasions as to his political affiliations, activities, and associates, including internal assignments and meetings of the Socialist Workers Party branch in San Francisco, ostensibly as part of the Office of Special Counsel investigation into possible violations of the Hatch Act."

The Hatch Act is an undemocratic piece of legislation to curtail workers' rights adopted under the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s. It prohibits federal employees from supporting or running in partisan elections. Chee, a candidate in a non-partisan election for board of supervisors in San Francisco in 1992, had been endorsed by the SWP.

In his reply to the FEC draft, Krinsky reasserted that the record "demonstrates that the Navy was concerned with, and broadly investigated, Chee for his perceived political association with the Socialist Workers Party, and did not confine itself to Hatch Act matters."

As to the case of airman Jason Coughlin, Krinsky replied that "the draft opinion fails to recognize the import of the explanation by Brigadier General Jensen, USAF, Deputy Director for Analysis, Concepts and Systems, for the suspension of Coughlin's security clearance and for the initiation of a security investigation: `because of your alleged involvement with socialist organizations, contact with a foreign national, and the perception of your questionable loyalty, honesty, and reliability which exists in your previous workercenter.'"

Responding to the draft opinion's claim that the outcome of Coughlin's case had been unclear in the SWP's initial petition, Krinsky reviewed the information that had been presented there. "No further development of the facts was needed," Krinsky explained that since the termination of the airman's position as computer programmer and of his security clearance remained in effect until he was granted separation from the Air Force on the basis of the fact that he was not able to advance in the field in which he enlisted.

Krinsky's reply to the FEC draft opinion was available to the press at the March 6 hearing. The advisory opinion adopted by the six FEC members changed the draft slightly in light of the material submitted on behalf of the SWP, stating that the Coughlin case "presents the possibility of a chilling effect on public association with the SWP."

Requirement on coding of contributors
Krinsky's March 4 reply to the FEC draft also objected to the imposition of the new requirement that SWP campaign committees assign a code number for each contributor and report those numbers to the government. This restriction was rationalized in the draft opinion as a way to permit either FEC officials or private citizens reviewing the SWP's reports "to determine whether contributions in excess of the limits are being made."

Responding on behalf of the SWP, Krinsky wrote that "there appears to be no reason why such a burden should be added now when it has not been thought necessary for the preceding twenty-three years of the SWP's exemption." He added that "imposing such a requirement places an unreasonable burden on the reporting procedures of a party whose small vote and small number of contributors have no bearing on the stated aims of federal reporting regulations."

At the March 6 hearing this new regulation was the subject of some discussion among FEC members and the commission attorney Levin, who prepared the draft. Commission member Scott Thomas said he had looked up Socialist Workers campaign committee reports and found that few of them raised over the $5,000 minimum that requires the filing of a report. From reviewing the Socialist Workers 1996 National Campaign Committee's reports, Thomas said, his conclusion was that the socialists appear to have a large number of small contributors to their election efforts.

Levin acknowledged that "on balance there is not a concern that they are exceeding the limits," but said the coding requirement was the only way to determine if a violation was occurring. He said that several state election boards have had a similar requirement in place for a number of years.

"Why are we doing this?" another commission member asked. "We don't want to get into litigation, do we? Will the regulation be applied to other parties, such as the Communist Party?"

Levin said that as of now the Communist Party, which also has an exemption from the reporting requirements, does not have the coding requirement, "but when they come up for review, yes, we would extend this to them as well."

The commission voted to approve the six-year extension, the draft advisory opinion as amended, and the newly imposed reporting requirement.

Greg McCartan is the SWP National Campaign Director.  
 
 
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