152
Opinion of the Court
officeholders to meet with large soft-money donors); accord, id., at 860-861 (Leon, J.).
Despite this evidence and the close ties that candidates and officeholders have with their parties, Justice Kennedy would limit Congress' regulatory interest only to the prevention of the actual or apparent quid pro quo corruption "inherent in" contributions made directly to, contributions made at the express behest of, and expenditures made in coordination with, a federal officeholder or candidate. Post, at 292, 298. Regulation of any other donation or expenditure—regardless of its size, the recipient's relationship to the candidate or officeholder, its potential impact on a candidate's election, its value to the candidate, or its unabashed and explicit intent to purchase influence—would, according to Justice Kennedy, simply be out of bounds. This crabbed view of corruption, and particularly of the appearance of corruption, ignores precedent, common sense, and the realities of political fundraising exposed by the record in this litigation.48
48 In addition to finding no support in our recent cases, see, e. g., Colorado II, 533 U. S., at 441 (defining corruption more broadly than quid pro quo arrangements); Shrink Missouri, 528 U. S., at 389 (same), Justice Kennedy's contention that Buckley limits Congress to regulating contributions to a candidate ignores Buckley itself. There, we upheld FECA's $25,000 limit on aggregate yearly contributions to candidates, political committees, and party committees out of recognition that FECA's $1,000 limit on candidate contributions would be meaningless if individuals could instead make "huge contributions to the candidate's political party." 424 U. S., at 38. Likewise, in California Medical Assn. v. Federal Election Comm'n, 453 U. S. 182 (1981), we upheld FECA's $5,000 limit on contributions to multicandidate political committees. It is no answer to say that such limits were justified as a means of preventing individuals from using parties and political committees as pass-throughs to circumvent FECA's $1,000 limit on individual contributions to candidates. Given FECA's definition of "contribution," the $5,000 and $25,000 limits restricted not only the source and amount of funds available to parties and political committees to make candidate contributions, but also the source and amount of funds available to engage in express advocacy and numerous other non-coordinated expenditures. If indeed the First Amendment prohibited Congress from regulating contributions to fund the latter, the otherwise-easy-to-remedy exploitation of parties as pass-throughs (e. g., a strict limit
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