What are Leadership CCEs?

During every election season, each mailbox is filled to abundance with political advertisements. Most of the mail, of course, is easily traceable to one or another campaign. With increasing frequency, however, political mail is originating not with the candidates, but with private groups sporting attractive but ambiguous names, such as “Floridians for a Brighter Future” or “Committee for Responsible Government.” While some of these organizations may be constituted under federal law, in Florida perhaps the greatest number of them are “committees of continuous existence,” or CCEs.

CCEs are a product of Florida law, which defines and regulates them. The statute governing CCEs was first enacted in 1973 to allow business interests to unite their resources to influence the political process, but any private individual, business, or association can, by following the statutorily prescribed method, form its own CCE. Once formed, a CCE may raise money in unlimited amounts from any source, and may, with few limitations, expend that money as it chooses. CCEs may not engage in “express advocacy”; that is to say, they must avoid the use of direct words or support for or opposition to a candidate, such as “vote for” or “vote against.” Nor may a CCE – at least until it registers as a political action committee, a separately defined, statutorily created entity – expend funds in support of or in opposition to any ballot proposition. So long as CCEs comply with these conditions, and confine themselves to $500 contributions per candidate per election, they enjoy unbounded latitude in the expenditure of unbounded funds.

CCEs must file quarterly reports divulging the names and addresses of its contributors, but the law exempts from disclosure the identities of those contributors whom the CCE pleases to denominate “members,” and no law requires the disclosure of the identity of the person or entity that controls the CCE. Since 2000, when the legislative term limits enacted by Florida voters eight years earlier first took effect, and important leadership posts were vacated, legislators have had recourse to CCEs in their pursuit of those prestigious positions. Because the leadership is selected by a vote of the legislature at large, some vehicle was necessary by which the aspirants could extend their influence and conciliate the support of their colleagues. To this end, legislators created their own CCEs, and undertook to accumulate large sums of money contributed by anonymous “members.” The purpose was to distribute the money in the form of campaign contributions to candidates for the legislature, who, after their election, and from a sense of gratitude to the powerful legislator who had patronized their respective campaigns, would return the favor by supporting the leadership aims of their patrons.