California state campaign finance rules already allow corporations and unions to give directly to independent expenditure campaigns without limits, so the court decision will have little impact on state contests.
But the decision overturns federal rules requiring that corporations and unions establish political action committees, or PACs, to spend on elections.
. . . “It certainly changes the Boxer race,” Stern said. “It means corporations, without setting up a PAC, can spend as much as they want opposing Boxer.”
“The outlook isn’t pretty after today. Elections will never work in the same way as they have before, and power has taken a giant swing towards the right.”
We already have a dominance of corporate spending in CA elections. It really takes place in the machinations involved in the ever increasing number of initiatives, where the airways fill with misleading hyperventiated negative commercials that only Gary South could love.
Take any major issue we are dealing with: Health Care and Climate Change come most to mind, and figure out how the will of the people is anything more than the will of the corporation. Consider the power of Exxon-Mobil and or Chevron vis-a-vis climate change legislation and offshore drilling. Consider the power of Stewart Resnick regarding water.
It is universally agreed that in the short-run this will bring a huge advantage to Republican candidates, who already are big supporters of one-dollar-one-vote corporatism over one-person-one-vote democracy. However, in the long term this really means the parties will become factions of corporate interests lining up against other factions of corporate interests. Perhaps ExxonMobil on one side and Chevron on the other, each trying to buy legislation to give them advantages over the other. The people won’t be players any longer.