Count the Arizona Democratic Party as another group concerned about the Citizens Clean Elections Commission’s awarding of matching funds.

The commission held a special meeting Oct. 29, the Friday before the election, to consider requests for more than $23,000 in matching funds from three candidates, two of them Republicans who wanted money to match the impact of Democratic Party mailings in their districts.

Marty Harper, counsel for the state Democrats, said the mailings the party sent out on candidates in legislative districts 10 and 17 were designed to avoid triggering matching funds.

The commission decided the mailings didn’t meet requirements and awarded $2,856.43 to Republican District 10 Senate candidate Linda Gray and a total of $13,500 to GOP District 17 candidate Laura Knaperek for the impact of their being mentioned in mailings that primarily were about their Democratic opponents.

Rules of the commission and state election laws allow parties to send out literature on slates of candidates and to provide information on comparisons of voting records (in the cases of incumbents) and differences in issues between candidates.

“The commission seems to be fixated on the phrase ‘unfavorable light,’” Mr. Harper said in considering whether a communication amounts to “expressly advocating” the election or defeat of a candidate or candidates.

“If a candidate comes to the commission and says that a communication put him in an ‘unfavorable light,’ that too often seems to be all it takes” to receive matching funds, Mr. Harper said.

Commission Director: Mailings Went Beyond Reporting Voting Records

Colleen Connor, executive director of the Clean Election Commission, said the mailings that were the subject of the Oct. 29 meeting “went beyond merely reporting voting records.”

“That’s a key word, ‘merely,’” Ms. Connor said. “When [literature] is stating merely a voting record or position, it’s not express advocacy. But this did not merely present a voting record. While the voting record might be in there somewhere, there’s also a lot more.”

The first page of the four-page mailing had photos of children with the headline, “Who stands up for Arizona’s public schools?” The next page contained a photograph of Ms. Gray next to the statement, “Not Linda Gray,” in all-capital letters. Under that heading were statements such as, “Even as chair of the House Education Committee, Linda Gray voted to cut budgets and improvements to public schools.”

“Despite her position on the Education Committee, Linda Gray has done more to hurt our schools than help them,” the mailing states. “She voted against everything from all-day kindergarten, to funding for community colleges, to child-care subsidies.”

Mr. Harper is not the first critic of matching funds awarded on the basis of independent expenditures made by organizations independent of candidates’ campaign committees. In September, Mainstream Arizona, an independent committee made up of centrist Republicans, also clashed with the Clean Elections Commission over the awarding of matching funds.

Mainstream Arizona sued the commission to try to curb matching fund awards and to require the commission to recover more than $67,000 it had given to a number of publicly funded Republicans who hold views considered more conservative. Mainstream Arizona lost the case in Maricopa County Superior Court.

Mainstream Arizona did succeed, though, in getting the commission to change its policy of allowing staff to make decisions on awarding matching funds over independent expenditures and instead require all such decisions to be made in public meetings by the five commissioners.

Mr. Harper said he thinks more clear-cut guidelines are needed. He said the state Democratic Party will seek to persuade the commission to adopt more specific guidelines through its rule-making process. —