With a progressive majority firmly in control, the Cypress City Council is poised to adopt a radical campaign finance “reform” ordinance that would criminalize any violations of its byzantine, confusing and useless regulations controlling political donations.
The ordinance is the brainchild of Councilman David Burke. Increasing government control and regulation of free political speech – which is what campaign donations are – is Burke’s driving passion.
Burke want to reduce the individual campaign contribution limit from $5,900 to only $500.
One of the great, dirty secrets of contribution limits that they are really incumbent protection disguised as campaign reform, because it is far easier for incumbent councilmembers than for challengers to raise competitive campaign war chests in smaller amounts.
Activists like Burke will claim stringent donation limit “level the playing field.” The opposite is true. Draconian contribution limits like that proposed by Burke only serve to hamstring non-incumbent candidates who might be able to build a competitive war chest with larger donations from a smaller number of supporters giving $5,900 each. Burke’s proposed limits instead forces non-incumbents to send more time fundraising and less time walking precincts and talking to voters.
Then there are convoluted rules governing the disclosure and “earmarked,” “cumulative” and various other categories of campaign donations. Burke’s ordinance turns even the inadvertent or unintentional violation of those rules into a criminal misdemeanor punishable by a $10,000 fine.
Click here to read the regulations, which are laughably touted as promoting transparency. No normal person would be able to understand or follow them without the assistance of an attorney specializing in campaign finance law. And they are expensive. Good luck to the neophyte candidate attempt trying to comply with these incomprehensible rules and raise enough to pay for campaign mail and a campaign attorney while laboring under the constraints of a $500 donation limit.
Laws that are clear and easy to understand and follow are an essential element of good government. Burke’s campaign reforms utterly fail on this count.
Burke’s Curious Exemption for Unions
Burke harbors the fervent belief that “special interest” money exercises an “undue influence” on government policymaking – which makes his exemption of unions from provisions of his campaign ordinance all the more interesting.
Burke, a Democrat, exempts “communications from an organization to its members other than a communication from a political party to its members” from the reporting transparency provisions of his ordinance. Why the special carve out for unions – especially government employee unions are the special interests with a perpetual, flagging incentive t exert influence on council members and city policy?
Burke’s Curious Exemption for In-Kind Donations
Another area where Burke carves out a disclosure exemption is for the in-kind contribution of services. Ordinarily, if a supporter donates their services for the campaign – for example, legal services or accounting services or communications or creative services – it’s monetary value is disclosed on campaign reports. Burke, for some reason, abolishes that requirement.
Perhaps he’s tacitly admitting the rules of his ordinance or so tortuous and labyrinthine that candidates will need campaign finance attorneys to avoid future prosecution for inadvertent mistakes – and Burke created this loophole so Cypress council candidates don’t go broke trying too comply with Burke’s ordinance. It’s also an avenue for special interests to provide non-disclosable support for council candidates.
Progressives Like Burke Continue Chasing the Campaign Finance Reform Mirage
There’s something irresistible about “campaign finance reform” to a certain strain of progressive reform types. No matter how much evidence mounts that gimmicks like contribution limits or public financing don’t work – and indeed, run contrary to our constitutional tradition of free political speech – time and again they surrender tot he temptation to try it again.
During the November 10, 2025. Last week, the Cypress City Council, Burke asserted “there has been too much special interest money in Cypress elections.”
The preamble to his campaign finance ordinance “declares that moderate monetary contributions to political campaigns are a legitimate form of participation in the American political process.”
Who decided what “moderate” is? Ultimately, under Burke’s vision, it is government authorities like himself who decide how their fellow citizens can give to the candidates of their choice.
Is a $500 donation “moderate” and non-corrupting, but a $2,000 contribution is immoderate and pernicious? If $500 is virtuous, then $250 must be even more so. Why no reduce it to $50? These limits are completely arbitrary with no empirical basis.
It begs the question that campaign reformers are never able to answer: how much is the right amount of money? They’ll never be able to tell you because they have no idea. They just “feel” there is “too much” being spent in political campaigns.
Burke’s ideas aren’t really solutions in search of a problem – they ignore the problem entirely.
Let’s start with “special interests.” Special interests are people, or people combined as organizations. They aren’t things or impersonal malevolent forces, which is how Burke uses the term. These are people or groups that have a particular interest in election outcomes because those outcomes will have a particular impact upon – generally speaking – their economic fortunes.
In other words, they have a particular interest in election outcomes because government has a a particular power over their ability to grow or succeed or do business. That governmental power is the cause of special interest spending on campaigns. When government officials have the power and inclination to regulate and control economic activity, they create special interests who have a powerful incentive to influence the actions of those officials.
It’s tempting to dismiss this campaign finance ordinance as merely an exercise in grandiosity and virtue signaling by Burke and his progressive council allies.
But it is more than that. It is really an exercise in protecting incumbents from challengers, protecting liberal special interests from transparency, and subjecting political opponents to criminal prosecution – while trying to fool the citizens of Cypress into thinking they are doing the opposite.
