In a 5-4 ruling, the US Supreme Court struck down a portion of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulations that barred corporations, labor unions or any other interest group (527 groups) from airing ads mentioning specific candidates within certain dates of elections in so called "issue ads." Read more from WaPo here.
The question now is, how does this affect North Carolina law?
In 2004, the NC General Assembly passed H737, which was modeled on the Federal McCain-Feingold electioneering law.
Now, I’m not a Constitutional lawyer, but it would seem that since the US Supreme Court struck down the Federal regulation, the state law (which you can read here) would now be rendered unconstitutional.
So what does this mean? It would eliminate the restriction on advocacy ads mentioning specific candidates by name within 30 days of a Primary or 60 days of a General election. While they can’t specifically say "Vote for/against Candidate X" they would be able to say "Call Candidate X and tell him you think he is wrong on [insert your favorite hot button issue here]."
Let’s get ready to rumble!
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