By Brian Cruikshank

If the role of money in state politics has you feeling blue (or red), take heart: Both Republicans and Democrats have initiated and enacted legislation dealing with campaign finance in 2015.

These bills follow the 2014 election season, in which Republican and Democratic candidates for state office combined raised more than $2.6 billion in campaign contributions. And if the presidential election is any indicator—where experts anticipate close to $5 billion in contributions—this number will only increase.

In 2014, Illinois gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner (R) solicited contributions from more than 10,000 people to raise the $80 million he needed to win. Keeping in mind the influence wealthy donors, political parties, or political action committees can have on elections, state legislatures rely on a variety of methods to regulate campaign finance:

• All 50 states require disclosure of certain contributions and expenditures, but the information that must be disclosed and level of disclosure varies by state.
• 37 states place limits on how much an individual can contribute to a candidate’s campaign, ranging from $28,200 (for California gubernatorial candidates) to $170 (for Montana legislative candidates).
• 13 states provide some method of public financing for candidates under which the candidate accepts money from income tax checkoffs in exchange for various promises to not raise money from private sources. These states typically cap the amount of public money a candidate can spend.

So far in 2015, more than 700 bills have been introduced dealing with some aspect of campaign finance, from public financing to the administration of judicial campaigns. The most active arena of campaign finance legislation seems to be disclosure, as more than 70 bills already have been enacted, mostly by Republican legislators. This trend comes after U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC, which made unconstitutional independent expenditure limits and individual aggregate contribution limits, respectively.

To see campaign finance-related bills introduced this year, check out NCSL’s 2015 Campaign Finance Database.

A glance at this database shows that both parties are committed to changing the campaign finance landscape. As to the level of disclosure or contribution limits, let’s just say they can’t agree on everything.

Brian Cruikshank is a legal intern with NCSL’s Elections and Campaigns Program. 

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