The Supreme Court gave the parties back some measure of agency over who represents their respective brands. But that’s only half the battle.
The Dispatch’s David Drucker recently summarized the result of Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision striking down limits on coordination between candidates and campaigns and their respective political parties, particularly when it comes to spending on television, radio, and online advertisements:
Re NRSC v FEC: Contribution limits were not eliminated. So whatever legal caps on donations to the DNC/RNC + congressional campaign committees before the ruling still exist. This empowers PARTIES but doesn't give wealthy donors any more power than they had prior.
— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) June 30, 2026
That fact seems to have eluded the national press.
Of course, political media outlets have given space to left-wing activists and Democrats who contend that “the Supreme Court has further empowered wealthy donors and special interests with outsized influence in elections,” as one such activist told Politico. That outlook reflects the general consensus on the left. “Today’s ruling is a win for billionaire donors and special interests who want more influence over the GOP agenda and an invitation for corruption,” read a joint statement produced by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Representative Suzan DelBene, and DNC chairman Ken Martin.
Politico’s reporters nevertheless accurately described what the ruling’s likeliest outcome. All that was previously “capped” were coordinated spending initiatives between candidates and party committees — compelling candidates to rely on supposedly autonomous PACs while the parties were forced to divert funds in support of their candidates to costly “independent expenditures.” This convoluted status quo stripped the major political parties of control of their own destinies. With the repeal of this strange convention, the parties can now support the candidates they like and impose some message discipline on their campaigns.
The New York Times doesn’t seem thrilled by this development. “The new landscape will result in a greater concentration of power within both national parties,” its report on the Supreme Court decision read, “which may now buy unlimited ads on behalf of the candidates they are supporting, all while coordinating directly with them.”
This sentence implies that the parties already had prohibitive influence over their candidates and the messages their campaigns promoted. They didn’t.
Indeed, ending limits on coordinated party spending would help reduce the influence small-dollar contributors have over the political process, particularly in primary races, which are every bit as corrupting as big money is presumed to be. If you’ve wondered why so many politicians seem to lock themselves into positions that appeal only to the radical fringes of their respective coalitions to the detriment of their broader appeal, there’s your answer.
A finding in favor of the NRSC might also provide party committees with more influence over the candidate selection process. If a nominee believes he or she cannot win without the support of the party’s committee, it creates more incentives to serve those institutions. That would be preferable to the status quo, in which candidates capture these electoral vehicles and use them as platforms to burnish their political brands — all and only for personal benefit at the expense of institutional health and cohesion.
In much of the press, the editorial focus has been on how much Republicans will benefit from this ruling. The RNC is flush with cash, after all, and the GOP’s committees rely less on small-dollar contributions than their Democratic counterparts. But at least the Times also noted that the donor base disparity used to give Democrats a leg up by virtue of the law, which gives parties access to cheaper ad rates than outside groups.
“In 2022, a 30-second TV ad during a football game in Nevada cost one Republican group $150,000,” the Times reported as an example. Meanwhile, “the Democratic candidate paid $21,000.”
Democrats would be better served by using these new rules to their advantage, applying the additional leverage they’ve been granted by the Court to make it harder for candidates who “hate the Democratic Party,” in former DNC chairman Jaime Harrison’s words, to hijack it. Instead, they are railing against the influence of high-dollar donors that the socialist activist class already believes have captured Democratic politicians and institutions.
The Supreme Court gave the parties back some measure of agency over who represents their respective brands. But that’s only half the battle. Unfortunately, the Court cannot provide the parties with the courage to stand up for themselves and their values.