ISPS Special Event: “SHOW ME THE MONEY: How Transparency in Political Donations Could Change American Elections”

Heather Gerken is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Professor Gerken specializes in election law and constitutional law.  She has published in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Political Theory, Political Science Quarterly, Roll Call, Legal Affairs, Legal Times, The New Republic. Democracy Journal, and elsewhere.  She has served as a commentator for a number of media outlets, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, NPR, the Lehrer News Hour, Bill Moyers, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC News. Her most recent scholarship explores questions of election reform, federalism, diversity, and dissent.  Her work has been featured in The Atlantic’ “Ideas of the Year” section and the Ideas Section of the Boston Globe and has been the subject of a festschrift and a symposium.  Professor Gerken clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th Circuit and Justice David Souter of the United States Supreme Court. After practicing for several years, she joined the Harvard faculty in September 2000 and was awarded tenure in 2005. In 2006, she joined the Yale faculty.  She has won teaching awards at both Yale and Harvard, been named one of the nation’s “twenty-six best law teachers” by a book published by the Harvard University Press, was featured in the National Law Journal for balancing teaching and research, won a Green Bag award for legal writing, testified three times before Senate Rules and Administration, and serves as a trustee for Princeton University.  Professor Gerken served as a senior legal adviser in the “Boiler Room” for the Obama for America campaign in 2008 and 2012.  Her proposal for creating a “Democracy Index” was incorporated into separate bills by then-Senator Hillary Clinton, then-Senator Barack Obama, and Congressman Israel and turned into reality by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which created the nation’s first Election Performance Index in February 2013.

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Raymond J. La Raja is an associate professor in political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and founding editor of The Forum, an electronic journal of applied research in contemporary American politics.  He is also associate director of the UMass Poll, which conducts Internet-based surveys of voters nationally.  His research focuses on political parties, interest groups, elections and campaign finance.  He is the author of Small Change: Money, Political Parties and Campaign Finance Reform (U. Michigan Press 2008), editor of New Directions in American Politics (Routledge, 2013) and has a forthcoming co-authored book, When Purists Prevail: How Campaign Finance Reform Polarizes American Legislatures (U. Michigan Press).  He serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the Campaign Finance Institute in Washington, DC.  He received his B.A. and M.P.P. from Harvard University and his PhD in political science from UC Berkeley.

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Trevor Potter is the founding President and General Counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a non-profit organization in Washington, D.C. focused on improving the U.S. campaign finance and election process.  He is also a member in Caplin & Drysdale, where he leads the firm's Political Activity Law Practice.

Mr. Potter is one of the country's best-known and most experienced campaign and election lawyers, and a former Commissioner (1991-1995) and Chairman (1994) of the Federal Election Commission.  Mr. Potter has been described by the American Bar Association Journal as, "hands-down one of the top lawyers in the country on the delicate intersection of politics, law and money."  Mr. Potter has been listed as one of Washington's Best Lawyers by Washingtonian magazine and has been recognized as a "Super Lawyer" by Washington DC Super Lawyers magazine.  He served as General Counsel to the John McCain 2008 campaign, and he was the legal counsel to Stephen Colbert's SuperPac "Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow," which spotlighted the role of secret money in the 2012 election.

Mr. Potter is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.  He has published several books and articles in the field, including: Political Activity, Lobbying Laws and Gift Rules Guide, (West Publishing, Third Edition 2008, Second Edition 1999); The New Campaign Finance Sourcebook, Brookings Institution, 2005; and Federal Election Law and the Internet, Brookings Institution, 2000.  He is a frequent guest speaker at a variety of professional meetings, has testified before Congress on federal election proposals and campaign finance regulation, and has taught campaign finance law at the University of Virginia School of Law and Oxford University.  He Co-Chaired the American Bar Association (ABA) Task Force on Lobbying Regulation and Co-Chairs the ABA's Administrative Law Section's Election Law Committee and Co-Chairs the Advisory Committee of the Standing Committee on Election Law.

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David M. Primo is the Ani and Mark Gabrellian Professor and an associate professor of political science and business administration at the University of Rochester, where he serves as the Director of Graduate Studies in the Political Science Department.  He is an expert in American politics, and his current research focuses on fiscal policy, corporate social responsibility, corporate political spending, and the effectiveness of campaign finance laws.  Primo is the author of three books, including the award-winning Rules and Restraint: Government Spending and the Design of Institutions, and numerous professional journal articles.  His op-eds have been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other national newspapers.  Primo has testified before Congress on the subject of constitutional budget rules, and his campaign finance research was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2011 case addressing the public funding of elections.  He is the recipient of a 2005 Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Education, as well as a 2005 Undergraduate Professor of the Year Award given by the University of Rochester Students’ Association.  Professor Primo joined the Rochester faculty in 2002 after receiving his Ph.D. from Stanford University.

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