On appeal, a consolidated version of the lawsuit, Mitch McConnell v FEC, was taken up by the supreme court.

The legislation placed new controls on the amount of “soft money” political party committees and corporations could spend on elections. The 2003 legal challenge championed by the Club for Growth targeted the McCain-Feingold Act, which had been passed with cross-aisle backing the previous year. Though little is known about the role of the committee, it clearly commanded some influence over the group’s policymaking.ĭuring the course of a 2005 investigation into likely campaign finance violations by the Club for Growth, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) noted that rank-and-file club members could “vote on an annual policy question selected by the founders committee”.Ĭrow has also been a major donor to the club, contributing $275,000 to its coffers in 2004 and a further $150,000 two years later.

In 2003, the anti-tax group the Club for Growth joined other rightwing individuals and organisations, including the Republican senator Mitch McConnell and the National Rifle Association (NRA), in attempting to push back campaign finance restrictions on election spending.Īt the time of the legal challenge, from at least 2001 to 2004, Crow was a member of the Club for Growth’s prestigious “founders committee”. In addition, Crow has been connected to several groups that over the years have lobbied the supreme court through so-called “amicus briefs” that provide legal arguments supporting a plaintiff or defendant. It reveals that a conservative organization affiliated with Crow did have business before the supreme court while Thomas was on the bench. He emphasized that the friend in question “did not have business before the court”.īut a close look at Thomas’s judicial activities from the time he became friends with Crow, in the mid-1990s, suggests that the statement might fall short of the full picture.

The justice, who is the longest-serving member of the nation’s highest court and arguably its most staunch conservative, insisted he had taken advice that “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends” did not have to be reported under federal ethics laws.

I Took It Personally by Josmamie Thomas