BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The city of Cincinnati's lawyers will go the U.S. Supreme Court today in a last-ditch effort to preserve Cincinnati's campaign spending limits law.
If the Supreme Court decides to hear the city's case, it would put Cincinnati at the center of the national debate over campaign finance reform.
Specifically, a successful case could lead to an overturning of the Supreme Court's 1976 Buckley vs. Valeo decision, in which the court said candidates could not be restricted in how much money they spend.
"We want the court to give us the opportunity to show that circumstances have changed in the past 22 years," said attorney John Bonifaz of the Boston-based National Voting Rights Institute. The institute was hired by the city to defend Cincinnati's 1995 spending limits law.
Mr. Bonifaz will file a petition today asking the Supreme Court to hear the city's appeal and to send the case back to U.S. District Court in Cincinnati for a trial.
If four of the nine justices agree to accept the case, it will be heard this fall. If the petition is rejected, it is the end of the case.
At issue is an ordinance adopted in 1995 by council on a 5-4 vote barring council candidates from spending more than three times a council member's salary -- or about $140,000 -- to get elected. In recent elections, some candidates have spent much more than $300,000 on council campaigns.
The law was immediately challenged by John Kruse, twice an unsuccessful Republican council candidate. Mr. Kruse filed suit in U.S. District Court here saying the law violated the decision in Buckley vs. Valeo. U.S. District Judge Herman Weber ruled in favor of Mr. Kruse without letting the case go to trial. Earlier this year, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati agreed with Judge Weber.
City lawyers asked the full 15-judge appeals court to reconsider, but not one of them would agree.
"So far, we've had 16 judges vote on this, and not one of them believed there was any merit to the case," said Kruse attorney Christopher Finney. "There's no issue here. The issue has already been decided."
But Mr. Bonifaz said he was encouraged recently to learn that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy told a group of journalists in August that Buckley vs. Valeo is a case that "ought to be looked at again in light of our experience."
"We are making the case that Buckley vs. Valeo did not completely shut the door on spending limits," Mr. Bonifaz said. "It said that if you can demonstrate that the circumstances warrant limits, they may be constitutional.
"We want the chance to show that the facts and circumstances of campaign finances have changed since 1976, and we want to use the Cincinnati experience to prove it," Mr. Bonifaz said.
Mr. Kruse's attorneys have 30 days from today's filing to file a response to the city's petition.
