NRA shows clout, agrees to let bill pass House after getting exemption

NRA agrees to let campaign finance bill pass

WASHINGTON — Displaying its remarkable clout, the National Rifle Association agreed on Tuesday to permit House passage of tougher disclosure requirements on campaign advertising and other political activity, one day after Democrats pledged to exempt the gun owners’ group from the bill’s key provisions.

Supporters of the measure conceded that without the NRA’s acquiescence, it was doomed to defeat.

“Any efforts to silence the political speech of NRA members will, as has been the case in the past, be met with strong opposition,” the organization said in a statement in which it pledged to refrain from lobbying either for or against the legislation’s passage as long as the exemption remains part of it.

The measure requires the listing of the names of the top five donors to an organization running political ads, including unions, businesses and non-profit organizations. It also mandates that any individual or group paying for independent campaign activities report any expenditure of $10,000 or more made in excess of 20 days before an election. Expenditures greater than $1,000 would have to be disclosed within 24 hours in the final 20 days of a campaign.

In a concession negotiated over the weekend, House Democrats agreed to an exemption from the disclosure requirements for organizations that have been in existence for a decade, have at least 1 million dues-paying members and do not use any corporate or labor union money to finance their campaign-related expenditures.

In addition to the NRA, other organizations meeting the same criteria would also be exempt, but Democratic officials said Tuesday they were not immediately able to name any.

The revised measure picked up the support during the day of Common Cause and other groups that have long sought greater disclosure requirements on political advertisements and other attempts to influence the outcome of political campaigns. They did so in a terse, two-sentence letter that lacked praise for the bill, suggesting underlying concerns about the NRA-related provision.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., the bill’s chief sponsor, said a vote was likely this week in the House, and predicted the bill would pass.

“Reform in Washington is never easy — that is why powerful special interests are mobilizing against our effort to shine a light on campaign-related spending,” he said in a statement. “The vast majority of Americans on the right, left, and in the center support these efforts.”

Similar legislation has been filed in the Senate, but prospects there are uncertain because of strong opposition from Republicans.

In general, the legislation is a response to a Supreme Court ruling handed down last winter that said businesses and unions could spend their own money directly on attempts to sway presidential or congressional elections. The 5-4 ruling overturned decades of precedent, and Democrats in Congress quickly announced plans to seek legislation requiring greater disclosure on the part of groups that pay for commercials and other campaign activities.

Under current law, even before the court ruling, groups have been able to run thinly veiled attack ads against candidates without disclosing their donors.

In recent primary races, for example, one group ran a commercial suggesting that Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul is crazy. A different group aired a commercial in Arkansas purporting to thank Democratic Senate challenger Bill Halter for shipping jobs offshore to India. Paul won his race; Halter lost his.

The NRA threatened to work against the original bill, causing dozens of Democrats to have second thoughts. Democratic officials said several dozen members of the rank and file had made it clear they did not want to buck the politically powerful NRA on the vote, for fear of repercussions in the fall elections. Republicans are expected to oppose the measure overwhelmingly, in part on free speech grounds, and in part out of concerns that the new rules would fall unfairly on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups aligned with the GOP.

One of the country’s best known and largest environmental groups, the Sierra Club, claims 1.3 million supporters on its website. But it has fewer than 1 million dues-paying members, according to David Willett, the deputy director of communications, and therefore would be covered by the new disclosure rules.