Despite predictions that January's Supreme Court ruling would lead to unprecedented corporate spending on elections, lawyers at some of the country's largest businesses told Corporate Counsel magazine that companies are in no hurry to spend more on elections, according to a story that ran Friday.
The magazine talked to lawyers at several large companies, including Microsoft and Kraft Foods, who said the response by companies so far to the ruling has been muted at best.
"Money and politics become something like an arms race," Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith told the magazine. "At the end of the day, all it really does is cost more money."
The article, which we learned about from Rick Hasen's excellent Election Law Blog, came on the same day as a report by the California Fair Political Practices Commission that outlined the state's top 15 highest spending special interest groups.
Six of those groups were corporations – PG&E, Chevron, AT&T, Philip Morris, Southern California Edison and Area Energy LLC – but none spent nearly as much as the state's service worker and teachers' unions, which have often been cited as the other primary beneficiaries of the ruling.
Bonus reading: The Corporate Counsel article also referenced a presentation put together last month by national law firm Foley & Lardner. It provides a great run-down of the ruling, if you're into that sort of thing.
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