Bill de Blasio is New York City's "Public Advocate." He was elected citywide and is first in line to succeed the Mayor. (If de Blasio's job is to advocate for the public, it is unclear what is expected of New York City's other elected officials.)
Last week, we
noted how de Blasio applied pressure to Goldman Sachs to extract a vow that the company would not spend money on elections.
Now, de Blasio's office has produced
this webpage, which places the 100 largest corporations in the United States into one of three categories: (1) those who have pledged not to spend money in elections; (2) those who have no policy on electoral spending; and (3) those who are "prepared to spend corporate money in elections." There are currently seven in the first category, and four in the third category. The four in the latter category are Target, Best Buy, Massey Energy, and International Coal. They were placed in this category based on news reports that they either have or were willing to spend corporate resources on electoral matters.
At this point, the advocacy begins. If you move your cursor over, say, Target, you get a link to a news report of Target's political spending, and this message: "Demand that corporations stop taking advantage of Citizens United. Call Target at 1-800-440-0680."
If you highlight one of the middle category (no policy) companies, such as Alcoa or Apple, you find out whether the company has pledged not to spend and whether it has pledged to disclose all spending. Then, "Hold Alcoa Accountable: Call Alcoa at 412-553-4545."
Why is de Blasio doing this? After the Goldman Sachs announcement,
de Blasio said, “This could be one of those moments that determines whether we are going to have a political system literally dominated by corporate money, or some ability by the people at the grass roots to determine the outcome of elections.” In other words, he's clinging to the anti-distortion rationale that the Supreme Court rejected in
Citizens United. (
Politico reports, "In an e-mailed statement, de Blasio says consumers can use the site to 'see which major companies are planning to distort our democracy.'")
In sum, what we have here is a taxpayer-funded effort encouraging the non-exercise of constitutional rights for reasons the Supreme Court has found to be illegitimate.