ATLANTA (CN) — An Eleventh Circuit panel will decide whether or not to give the Libertarian Party of Georgia another chance at pursuing its challenge to a campaign finance law that allows some political candidates to accept unlimited campaign contributions, a fundraising advantage the party says benefits Republican and Democratic hopefuls over third-party contenders.
An attorney for the Libertarian Party of Georgia and its 2022 lieutenant governor candidate Ryan Graham asked the three-judge panel to revive a lawsuit that claims an amendment to the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Act violates the First Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In the lawsuit, filed against Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr and the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, the party claims the act unfairly allows Republican and Democratic candidates to create special “leadership committees” to accept campaign contributions over the typical limits.
Signed into law by Governor Brian Kemp in July 2021, the law allows the governor, lieutenant governor and nominees of a “political party” for those two offices to create leadership committees, allowing them to raise and spend unlimited funds for their campaigns, including during legislative sessions.
Georgia’s election code recognizes only the Republican and Democratic parties as “political parties.” The Libertarian Party is a “political body” under the code.
Individual contributions to candidates for statewide elected office are currently set at $8,400 for a primary or general election and $4,800 for runoff elections.
Graham claimed the law unfairly allowed his Republican opponent, Burt Jones, to raise more money than him.
Arguing on behalf of Graham and the Libertarian Party of Georgia on Wednesday, Atlanta attorney Bryan Sells asked the panel to overturn a federal judge’s refusal to grant his clients an injunction either blocking officials from limiting leadership committees to Republican and Democratic nominees or prohibiting officials from enforcing the leadership committee statute in its entirety.
U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen ruled last year that Graham and his party were trying to “convince the court to rewrite the [leadership committee] statute to permit them to raise unlimited funds under a statutory campaign finance scheme they allege is unconstitutional, and prevent an agency of the executive branch from enforcing an unambiguous Georgia law.”
With the election long over, the Eleventh Circuit panel questioned whether Graham’s demand for an injunction was still relevant. The panel was comprised of U.S. Circuit Judges Elizabeth Branch, Kevin Newsom and Robert Luck, all appointees of former President Donald Trump.
“I don’t see anything in the complaint about [Graham] running again for a specific election,” Branch pointed out, adding that Graham’s alleged injury has “evaporated.”
But Sells argued that the issues in the case will still be important to the Libertarian Party in the next election cycle.
“It matters whether Libertarian Party candidates are going to have to fundraise at the retail level or whether they’re going to be able to fundraise at the wholesale level like their competitors from the Democratic and Republican parties,” Sells said.
An attorney for the state officials told the panel that a preliminary injunction should be granted only in extraordinary circumstances “to preserve the status quo.”
“If there had ever been grounds for the grant of a preliminary injunction, there certainly are not grounds today,” Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Young said. “Today there’s no campaign. There may be a bank account that has a balance in it, but there’s no longer a campaign. This candidate lost.”
Sells insisted that the case could be vital for third-party candidates in upcoming races.
“The Libertarian Party is going to run candidates for [statewide] offices in the future and it needs to know now what the fundraising playing field is going to be in the next cycle so it can recruit top quality candidates,” Sells said.
“If they cannot raise the same kind of money from the same kinds of donors that the Democratic and Republican candidates can raise, that puts them at a disadvantage today.”
Branch also questioned whether the Libertarian Party could both challenge the leadership committee statute and ask the panel to allow the party to form a committee under the statute.
Other judges on the panel appeared to agree with Branch, asking Sells if the challenge his clients were raising was really an attempt to prevent the enforcement of campaign contribution limits in general.
Attorneys for the officials raised a similar question in a brief submitted to the court ahead of Wednesday’s arguments, telling the panel Graham’s challenge was misplaced because the law does not harm him, nor even apply to him.
Even if Graham were able to form a leadership committee, Young told the panel, there is nothing that shows a donor would be willing to donate to his “nonexistent” campaign.
The case is the third in a line of legal challenges to the leadership committee statute.
Former U.S. Senator David Perdue and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams both sued over the law in 2022.
In separate complaints, Perdue and Abrams claimed that while incumbent Governor Kemp could chair his Georgians First leadership committee in the Republican primary election for governor, neither of them could chair leadership committees until they won their respective primaries.
In both cases, Cohen issued injunctions blocking Kemp’s committee from using funds to advocate for the governor’s reelection during the primary.
Follow @KaylaGoggin_CNS
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