Same side

McCain: Citizens United 'worst Supreme Court decision'

By Joe Dana

Just for the record, there is at least one political debate in which both President Obama and Ariz. Sen. John McCain are on the same side. They both hate the Citizens United decision.

During a banter session with reporters Monday in Cave Creek, McCain mentioned the case during a conversation about the Supreme Court.

"I would still argue that the worst decision the Supreme Court made was Citizens United, which has unleashed this flood of billions of dollars of unaccounted-for money that will sooner or later, that will lead to enough corruption that we will have a reform," McCain said.

McCain's disdain for the decision is not a surprise. The ruling, released in January, 2010, gave corporations and unions the green light to spend unlimited amounts of cash on political ads and other vehicles intended to defeat political candidates. It also led to the creation of super PACs.

The ruling struck sections of Sen. McCain's hard-fought 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation. It also led to a gush of "dark money" spending on congressional and senate elections around the nation, as described in a recent Brennan Center for Justice report.

Locally, questions have surfaced recently over how dark money influenced the 2014 Corporation Commission election, as highlighted by Brahm Resnik of 12 News and columnist Laurie Roberts of the Arizona Republic.

Whether the consequences of Citizens United will eventually lead to "enough corruption" to produce reform, as McCain predicts, is unclear. Even if it happens, I'm assuming the senator and President Obama would choose to celebrate each in his own way, separately.