BRIEFS
RISING STARS SPOTLIGHT
HOW ADAM BONIN SAFEGUARDED BLOGS FROM CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAW BY AMY KATES
DEFENDING THE BLOGOSPHERE
When the Federal Election Commission
(FEC) announced in 2005 that it was
going to determine standards for applying
campaign finance law to the Internet, Adam
Bonin had a hunch. “The bloggers could be
screwed by this,” he says. “Just screwed.”
Bonin learned about the importance of the
Internet as a campaign tool while working on
Joe Hoeffel’s U.S. Senate bid in 2004. When
a friend of his, Philadelphia blogger Duncan
Black of Eschaton blog, realized how he and
other political bloggers would be affected
by the new rules, he helped recruit fellow
bloggers Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder
of Daily Kos, and Matt Stoller ( MyDD.com) to
the cause. Bonin represented all three pro
bono before the FEC.
“There was language in early drafts of
the rulemaking that would have forced all
bloggers involved in politics, and certainly
those involved in fundraising, to register with
the federal government as political action
committees, to disclose all of their activities
to comply with record-keeping requirements
… some really outlandish, excessive stuff,”
Bonin says. “We maintained that the proper
way to treat bloggers under the law was the
same as how traditional media were already
treated, which is that when a newspaper
runs an editorial on behalf of a candidate
or when a radio talk show host encourages
fundraising on behalf of a candidate, that’s
exempt from campaign finance law.”
Bonin, who’s been a political junkie ever
since “the only way to get political news
was the thump of The Philadelphia Inquirer
landing at the door,” hoped the case
would help raise his profile in the political
legal arena—an area he wanted to add to
his 9/11 litigation and other commercial
litigation work at Cozen O’Connor. “I was
hoping to be able to market myself as an
expert,” he says.
Turns out he marketed himself too well.
“We had won so thoroughly that there
wasn’t much left for me to do as a lawyer,”
he says with a laugh. “There weren’t going
to be clients who needed me to navigate
this space because the rules were clear and
[bloggers] were exempt.”
Soon, though, Bonin was landing clients
outside of the blogosphere. “Local PACs,
local candidates whom I worked with on a
variety of campaign finance and election
law matters. … Daily Kos became a paying
client as they grew,” he says.
As the niche practice grew, it became
clear that his work was incompatible with
Cozen. “There were business conflicts
that quite understandably came into
play, which restricted my ability to add
particular clients,” Bonin says. “But I
didn’t want to be a political lawyer who
wasn’t practicing political law.” So Cozen,
whom he lauds for its entrepreneurial
spirit and support, struck him a sweet
deal: leave the firm but become a tenant,
and retain clients on campaign finance,
lobbying and related work.
Officially a solo act as of January 2012,
business is good. “I don’t think that I’ve
had a typical day yet, especially right now,
in the middle of election season,” Bonin
says. Although he’s tight-lipped about
his clients, he says a lot of his workload is
advising them about ballot access issues.
He also works in political compliance;
federal, state and local campaign finance
law; pay-to-play laws; and federal, state
and local lobbying laws.
Bonin, a prolific political blogger in his
own right—he sits on Daily Kos’ masthead
as a contributing writer and serves as
its general counsel of litigation—has no
aspirations to run for office. But if he does,
he might have one serious VIP in his corner.
“Once he was just the guy teaching
election law,” Bonin says of Professor
Barack Obama, whom he cites as an
“engaged, smart teacher with a quick,
sharp, sarcastic sense of humor.” Bonin
took two classes with Obama. “I did B+
level work,” Bonin says. “I wasn’t his
favorite, although I saw him in 2004 when
he came to Philadelphia to campaign
for Hoeffel and in 2007 when he started
his presidential campaign, and he
remembered me both times.”
