fbpx

Issue: Citizens Clean Elections Commission

Campaign finance websites still broken as election 2020 nears

computer

The 2020 election is a year away and the state’s campaign finance websites are broken.

See The Money – a website that presents data visually – has never worked properly, and the state’s campaign-finance database has had its own set of problems since the 2018 election, and the Secretary of State’s Office is now approaching a crucial deadline. Come January, candidates from throughout the state will be filing their first financial reports for the 2020 campaign cycle and the public will want to follow the money.

See The Money was a pet project of former Secretary of State Michele Reagan, and now Secretary of State Katie Hobbs is in charge of managing and marketing it, and more immediately, trying to fix it.

“It doesn’t work, and we want it to work,” Hobbs said. Her staff has spent the past year focused on improving the reporting side, making sure the information going into the system through Beacon, the new reporting portal, works with the website’s framework and accurately displays that information in a simple and intuitive way.

Hobbs said by election time, things will change.

“Our obligation is to house campaign finance reports and the goal of my administration is transparency to the public and that’s the biggest reason for campaign finance reporting,” Hobbs said. She said it’s crucial for the public to have access to that information, but what limits them, is their role in all of this – her office is a filing agency, not an enforcement agency.

“People think we dig through campaign finance reports and find problems – we don’t,” Hobbs said. “The reason complaints are made and campaign finance reports are found is because the public looks at those reports and they report problems to us. We rely on that.”

But Hobbs said it needs to be a “functional tool” for that to happen, and it’s not there yet. Complaints come mostly from campaign staff, lobbyists, or anyone else involved in politics.

They say it doesn’t display data in a way that is easy to understand. Overlooked campaign finance reporting loopholes and flaws have led to misleading or confusing figures, confusing and infuriating even to the most seasoned political operative. If they can’t understand it, they say, how is the public, who was initially the target demographic, supposed to?

One of them, Arizona Advocacy Network Deputy Director Morgan Dick, said she and her colleagues can’t remember the last time they used the website because they’ve had so many issues with it. Most of Dick’s job deals with digging through campaign finance reports, which can be tedious.

The idea and initial promise of See The Money was a godsend, she said, and it would have made her job easier. It was a great idea, Dick said, but it just wasn’t executed right.

“We often saw things were not congruent with what the campaign finance report said,” Dick said. “These data charts that you can export, they just didn’t accurately display the kind of spending we were seeing in the campaign finance side of the reporting.”

It’s so unreliable that Dick and her coworkers have to use third party sites like Follow The Money, hosted by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which she said is generally more accurate but still has its issues. With the way things are now, it’s almost always easier, and more accurate, to go to the original documents, copy and paste them into a spreadsheet and do their own analysis, Dick said.

Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in her office. Hobbs said problems with the state’s campaign-finance websites will be fixed by the 2020 election. (Photo by Andrew Nicla/Arizona Capitol Times)
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in her office. Hobbs said problems with the state’s campaign-finance websites will be fixed by the 2020 election. (Photo by Andrew Nicla/Arizona Capitol Times)

For a long time, because of issues with transferring what’s reported, it’s been garbage in, garbage out. Those issues have been chipped away through years and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“When you had the old campaign-finance system and See The Money was put in place, they didn’t necessarily talk to each other the right way,” Hobbs said.

She said there hasn’t been any statutory changes in what or how this information is reported, rather the way that the information is transferred and presented has.

What remains is an accessibility issue: people completely new to the system often don’t know what they’re looking at or what to look for. Now the office is working to better display the information and ensure that what’s being displayed is as accurate as they can assure it is.

Once that’s fully fixed and the website is made more accessible, it will be useful, Hobbs said, but it will never live up to the original vision. What was originally proposed was a place for every campaign finance report in the entire state, including local jurisdictions.

However, that dream never materialized because Hobbs nor her staff can compel other jurisdictions to participate and, Hobbs said, there’s no political will in the Legislature to do that. Even if there was interest, the system isn’t equipped to deliver.

If that did happen, Hobbs and others feared people would be charged to use that system. Change has been slow and hard to accomplish, Hobbs said, because her administration was a victim of circumstance – she walked into a project

The website was one of Reagan’s 2014 campaign promises: making it easier for people to see where candidates get their campaign money. Over $1 million has been spent to build the site and make it accessible for most people, but it still has issues.

Five years later, the website is still being tweaked.

Under Reagan, the office spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the project, hiring a contractor that didn’t finish and forcing it in-house in 2016. Reagan, her staff and the contractors she employed hailed the website as a success with minor issues.

Former Secretary of State Michele Reagan at her inauguration in 2015. Reagan promised during her 2014 campaign to make it easier for people to see where candidates get their campaign money. Over $1 million has been spent to build a campaign-finance website and make it accessible for most people, but it doesn’t work. (File Photo/Arizona Capitol Times)
Former Secretary of State Michele Reagan at her inauguration in 2015. Reagan promised during her 2014 campaign to make it easier for people to see where candidates get their campaign money. Over $1 million has been spent to build a campaign-finance website and make it accessible for most people, but it doesn’t work. (File Photo/Arizona Capitol Times)

Together, Reagan and Hobbs have spent more than $1 million on the project.

One of the original developers for See The Money, Al Kawazi, said the larger problem has always been how the data is received. Kawazi said he and the other developers did their job.

“The problem is that the data is only as good as the data that’s coming in,” Kawazi said. “So if somebody puts in data that is wrong or they misallocated funds where they should have gone to as an expense, they put it as income, or whatever the reason may be – you can easily see that in the visualizations.”

Another problem, Kawazi said, was categorizing names and grouping contributions from the same person or not for people with similar names. Sometimes, when filing, mistakes can happen; someone misspells their name, changes a number in their address or even puts down their second home and not their primary address. Whatever the case, Kawazi said inconsistencies in data make it more difficult for developers or their algorithms to reasonably group entries from people or organizations and to assume they are identical.

Kawazi and company were experimenting with machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, and beginning to aggregate people by jobs, addresses and other information they gave. Compiling that accurately became hard at times because some people clearly, intentionally misreported their name or address consistently, knowing the information would be public and fearing people would send them letters or show up at their house, Kawazi said.

Kawazi said that flaws aside, the state has one of the most organized systems for presenting this data, but the problem remains that the data is dirty.

When Reagan first was elected, she had hoped to complete the website during or before June 2016, but she ended up being late, over budget and needed more money.

To help foot the $462,000 bill to develop a new campaign finance website to replace the other project that failed to launch, Reagan asked the Citizen’s Clean Election Commission to pay $200,000, and $50,000 each year for maintenance.

Director of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission Tom Collins said he’s not sure where exactly that money spent was put toward, if it was worth it and he’s not confident that it’s “up to snuff.” Collins often hears complaints from members of the public about the site and about how information can be misreported often enough to warrant double checking the original documents, confusion over the definition of a particular vendor, not distinguishing between different types of transactions and just a general lack of explanation for what exactly people are looking at.

At the end of the day, it’s not reliable, Collins said, adding that it doesn’t achieve the goals that the commission considered when it decided to make the service agreement. Collins understands that website development is hard work and said he isn’t criticizing Hobbs personally, rather he wants to make sure this project lives up to its full potential.

“If See The Money does not provide voters information they can use, grab on-the-go and use, without having to double check the campaign finance database, what did our $200,000 buy in the first place?” Collins said.

Campaigns spend nearly $54 million on renewable energy ballot measure

money-cash-620

The state’s largest electric company has now poured more than $30 million into its bid to convince Arizonans not to force it and other utilities to use more renewable resources.

And the spending by Arizona Public Service under the banner of Arizonans for Affordable Energy doesn’t count another more than $734,000 pumped into the campaign against Proposition 127 by rural electric cooperatives, plus about $165,000 from Unisource Energy, the parent company of Tucson Electric Power.

That’s not to say the dollars are all on one side of the issue.

Citizens for a Healthy Arizona, financed largely by a political action committee formed by California billionaire Tom Steyer, already had spent close to $24 million by Oct. 20, the last day of the reporting period for the newly filed disclosure forms.

The initiative would require utilities to obtain half of their power from renewable sources by 2030, a list that includes solar, geothermal and wind. By contrast, the current rules adopted by the Arizona Corporation Commission mandate just a 15 percent renewable standard by 2025.

Only one other ballot measure has attracted that much cash.

Citizens for Fair Tax Policy, funded by state and national Realtors have plowed about $23.6 million into its campaign to amend the Arizona Constitution to forever bar lawmakers from expanding the state sales tax to include services. That would include everything from medical and veterinary care to tax preparation, accounting and real estate services.

The newly formed opposition group called No on126 has accumulated donations of less than $123,000. And the lion’s share of that comes from Stand for Children, a nonprofit group that advocates for issues like early childhood literacy.

Much farther back in the cash department is Save our Schools Arizona which is trying to convince voters to overturn the 2017 legislation that allows any of the 1.1 million students in Arizona public schools to seek vouchers of state tax dollars to attend private or parochial schools. That organization’s spending is approaching $600,000.

Most of that group’s money urging a “no” vote on Proposition 305 comes from a separate nonprofit also operating under the same name which is allowed to accept donations without disclosing its sources.

On the other side of the battle is the Yes for Ed committee with just $53,000 in donations.

Its campaign finance reports show close to half of that coming from Every Child Can Learn, a Phoenix corporation run by Phoenix businesswoman Lynn Londen. She said the organization, formed years ago to advocate for things like education reform and school choice, gets most of its money from her family-run businesses.

Arizonans Against Dark Money has collected only about $10,500 in its support of Proposition 306.

That measure would prohibit publicly funded candidates from spending any of their cash with political parties. It also would subject the rules of the bipartisan Citizens Clean Elections Commission to the oversight of the Governor’s Regulatory Review Council whose members are all appointees of Doug Ducey.

The campaign against Prop 306 is better funded, with the latest reports showing The Future We Want with nearly $322,000 in expenses.

Most of that comes from Citizens for Accountable Government. And a check of that organization’s finance records finds its money generated from various labor unions.

The Future We Want also has put another nearly $7,000 into a campaign against Proposition 125. That measure would make constitutional changes in the benefits for those in state retirement plans for corrections officers and elected officials, a move proponents say is necessary to keep both plans solvent.

There were no reports of spending in favor of the measure.

Court voids 2017 ‘dark money’ law

Gavel and scales

A judge has slapped down efforts by Gov. Doug Ducey and the Republican-controlled Legislature to create new exceptions to laws that require disclosure of campaign finance spending.

In a ruling released Wednesday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Palmer said the 2017 measure unconstitutionally conflicts with a 1998 voter-approved law designed to reduce the influence of money on politics.

Wednesday’s decision most immediately limits the ability of political parties to spend unlimited dollars on behalf of their candidates without disclosing the expenditures. It also voids some exemptions that lawmakers created in campaign finance laws, like allowing people to pay the legal fees of candidates without it counting against the legal limit of how much financial help they can provide.

But attorney Jim Barton who represented those challenging the 2017 law said the most significant part of the ruling is it restores the right of the voter-created Citizens Clean Elections Commission to police and enforce campaign finance laws against all candidates and their donors, not just those who are running with public financing.

That is significant because the 2017 law stripped the commission of that authority, giving it to the Secretary of State’s Office. But it is the commission that has adopted — and has enforced — rules requiring any group that is spending money to influence campaigns to publicly disclose which candidates they are supporting or opposing and how much they are spending.

Wednesday’s ruling, however, leaves intact the ability of groups established under the Internal Revenue Code as “social welfare” organizations to continue to shield the identities of their donors as long as they report their expenditures. The lawsuit did not challenge that “dark money” exemption.

There was no immediate response from the Secretary of State’s Office, which was defending the law, on the ruling or whether there will be an appeal.

The 2017 law, known as SB 1516, was championed by House Speaker J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler. He said that existing laws interfered with the rights of free speech and people to participate in the political process with their dollars without giving up their right of privacy. It was approved on a largely party-line vote and signed into law by Ducey.

But the flip side of that, according to foes of the law, was that any decrease in disclosure requirements denies voters of at least some indication of who is spending money to try to influence the outcome of campaigns. That, they said, is why voters in 1998 gave broad powers to the commission to police campaign contributions.

Palmer agreed. In fact, he took a slap of sorts at state lawmakers for failing to enact such comprehensive regulations themselves.

The judge pointed out that the people who crafted the Arizona Constitution directed the first state Legislature to “enact a law providing for the general publicity of campaign contributions to and expenditures of campaign committees and candidates for public office.”

“The Legislature has never complied with that directive,” Palmer wrote. He said it took approval of the Citizens Clean Elections Act to even begin to comply.

One of the key provisions of that 1998 law, was that requirement for “independent expenditures” on behalf of or against candidates to be disclosed.

Since voters approved the law, the commission has pursued several high-profile cases when there have been TV commercials attacking candidates with no disclosure of what group was financing the effort. Barton said that Palmer’s ruling “confirms the Clean Elections Commission’s authority” to continue enforcing those requirements.

“We believe that that’s the answer to fighting dark money,” he said.

Barton said one of the biggest loopholes SB 1516 created was the ability of political parties to spend unlimited amounts of money on behalf of their candidates without disclosure.

In just the most recent election, for example, the Arizona Republican Party ran TV commercials on behalf of the reelection efforts of Gov. Doug Ducey and Attorney General Mark Brnovich. But the exact amount they spent on behalf of each was never reported because of the exemption created in the 2017 law.

This became particularly significant this year because Ducey raised money not only directly for his own campaign but also took corporate and large-dollar contributions, which he could not accept personally, through a separate Ducey Victory Fund committee. And any dollars Ducey could not keep himself were given to the Arizona Republican Party, which then was free to use it to help the governor’s reelection, all without detailing how much was spent on his behalf.

This isn’t just a practice of one party.

The Arizona Democratic Party also put $3.3 million into the effort to elect Katie Hobbs as Secretary of State. But that figure became public not through campaign finance laws. It was only because iVote, which promotes the election of Democratic secretaries of state, the group that gave the money to the state party to promote Hobbs, put out a press release detailing the expenditure.

Group seeking ‘dark money’ ban tries to ride wave of momentum

A group trying to ban anonymous campaign contributions in Arizona elections is counting on a recent groundswell of volunteer signature-gathering to get its proposal on the ballot in 2018.

Outlaw Dirty Money, a campaign led by former attorney general Terry Goddard, wants to let Arizonans vote on a constitutional amendment to ban “dark money,” the term given to campaign dollars spent by groups who don’t disclose the source of their money.

In the 2014 election, dark money spending in Arizona exceeded $900,000 in races for the state Senate and House of Representatives alone. Gov. Doug Ducey benefitted from $3.5 million in anonymous contributions that election cycle.

Before Arizonans get a chance to vote, Goddard and a team of volunteer circulators must gather 225,963 signatures by July 5, 2018, to put the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot.

Terry Goddard
Terry Goddard

If approved by the voters, the Arizona Constitution would be amended to require campaigns that exceed $10,000 in spending in a two-year election cycle to disclose the original sources of donations they receive. A campaign would have five days to make the disclosure. After every subsequent $10,000 or more in expenses, they would have 24 hours to disclose the sources of their latest donations.

The Citizens Clean Elections Commission would be given the authority to enforce the new disclosure rules by means of fining those who fail to make disclosures in a timely fashion, or even bringing a campaign before a judge. Those fines would in turn be used to finance the commission’s enforcement efforts.

There is an exception in the constitutional amendment — donors whose contributions are less than $2,500 in a two-year election cycle don’t need to disclose their identity.

Goddard said the signature-gathering effort would be all volunteer. Typically, gathering over 200,000 signatures is a difficult goal to reach without paid circulators, but Goddard pointed to a recent effort to refer a controversial law expanding school vouchers to voters as evidence that volunteers can get the job done.

That campaign, Save Our Schools Arizona, needed to gather 75,321 signatures in 90 days to block the voucher expansion bill this summer. They gathered more than 110,000 signatures, and now their network of volunteer circulators is prepared to help Goddard get the dark money ban on the ballot, too.

“Many of those folks are kind enough to help us,” Goddard said of the SOS Arizona campaign. “So we’re starting from, as they say, the shoulders of giants.”

Dawn Penich-Thacker, a spokeswoman for SOS Arizona, said the campaign’s network of volunteer circulators are already fired up about the anti-dark money effort, and that they see parallels between it and their own campaign against the voucher bill.

Dawn Penich-Thacker
Dawn Penich-Thacker

“The primary opponent for SOS has been the dark money national special interest groups. It’s Americans for Prosperity who are working with the American Federation for Children who sue us to try and keep our accomplishment off the ballot. So a lot of our volunteer network really sees a clear connection between what we’re trying to do and what attorney general Goddard is trying to do,” Penich-Thacker said.

Given the 2,500-strong network of circulators registered with SOS Arizona, it’s more than possible they’ll gather the more than 200,000 signatures necessary by July, she said.

“I think with that timeline, and just the fact that people are energized. And this time they know it’s possible,” Penich-Thacker said. “When we were starting out back in May, everyone told us ‘it will never be done, it’s impossible.’ This time we know it’s possible , and I think people are kind of encouraged by that.”

While education is a topic on many Arizonans’ minds, both at the Capitol and beyond, Goddard said the topic of dark money could resonate just as much with voter across the state.

“I think there’s a sense of disconnect among Arizona voters, a sense that people are manipulating the political process that they have absolutely no influence over, and no idea who they are,” Goddard said. “And that kind of outrage is, I think, going to translate into an awful lot of people from all parties helping us with this.”

Count former attorney general Tom Horne as one such Republican ready to help out Goddard, a Democrat.

“It’s very important for the voters of Arizona, that when they get a message they see or hear, they know where it’s coming from. It tells you something about the credibility, it tells you something about the motivation. And people who have a political message should have the courage of being open about it and not hiding,” Horne said.

Horne, who showed up to help Outlaw Dirty Money file with the Secretary of State’s Office on Wednesday morning, said he’s there so that people don’t think of the campaign as an exclusively-Democratic endeavor, and pledged his own “maximum” participation.

“This is very important for the future of Arizona as a political entity,” Horne said. “And it’s bipartisan. It has nothing to do with political party.”

 

Group tries to dodge fine for campaign finance law violation

M

A group that spent $260,000 attacking a 2014 foe of Doug Ducey in his first gubernatorial race is trying again to escape paying a fine for violating state campaign finance laws.

Attorneys for the Legacy Foundation Action Fund contend that the Citizens Clean Elections Commission lacked the power to impose a $96,000 fine for the commercials targeting former Mesa Mayor Scott Smith. They say there was no proof that the ad was done to advance the political fortunes of anyone else in the Republican gubernatorial primary.

Beyond that, the lawyers contend that the commission lacks the authority to enforce the campaign finance laws.

Christopher Whitten
Christopher Whitten

So far that argument has not held water. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Christopher Whitten ruled in August that the lawyers for the fund were misreading the law.

Now the fund is seeking intervention by the state Court of Appeals.

This is actually the second time the Legacy Foundation Action Fund has challenged the ability of the commission to police campaign funding. An earlier claim was thrown out by the Arizona Supreme Court after the justices ruled that the fund waited too long to appeal the fine.

But in that ruling, Justice Clint Bolick said the group was free to pursue other, unspecified legal challenges. That led to the current litigation.

The case stems from a commercial that ran in early 2014 when Smith was pursuing the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

Produced by the Legacy Foundation Action Fund, it noted that Smith, who was mayor of Mesa, also was president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. More to the point, it focused on some of the stands the conference had taken.

“They fully endorsed Obamacare from the start,” the commercial said. And it said the conference supported the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate carbon emissions and “backed the president’s proposal to limit our Second Amendment rights.”

On the screen were photos of Smith placed next to pictures of a smiling Obama.

Jason Torchinsky, one of the attorneys for the fund, argued there was nothing improper about the commercial.

More to the point, he said it was not designed to influence the election but simply to educate Arizonans about Smith. Torchinsky noted that the ad made no reference to Smith’s race against Ducey nor even to Smith’s status as a candidate.

The Clean Elections Commission, however, concluded otherwise, ruling that its true purpose was to affect the GOP gubernatorial primary. And what that meant, the commission concluded, was that the Legacy Foundation Action Fund, by virtue of attempting to influence an election, was required to publicly disclose the spending, which it did not.

That failure led to the $96,000 penalty – a penalty that the commission is still trying to get paid.

Now attorneys for the Legacy Foundation Action Fund are raising new arguments about why it was never required to disclose the spending and, by extension, why it doesn’t have to pay the fine.

Some of this is a rehash of the original arguments.

Attorney Brian Bergin argues that the commission, in concluding the purpose of the commercial was to affect the 2014 GOP primary, ignored the plain language of what viewers saw.

“The Arizona advertisement discusses issues: government spending, Second Amendment rights, and the regulation of carbon emissions,” Bergin wrote, while telling viewers the policies “are wrong for Mesa” and urging them to call Smith “and tell him to support policies that are good for Mesa.”

Tom Collins
Tom Collins

But Tom Collins, the commission’s executive director, said that ignores other facts.

He pointed out that the positions taken by the mayors’ organization – the ones that Legacy Foundation said it was educating Mesa voters about – all were taken before Smith became president of the group.

And then there was the fact that by the time the commercials aired Smith was no longer its president. But he was running for governor.

“Taken together, allegations (about Smith) that were not correct, the timing of the ad and other factors, there’s really no way to see the ad as anything other than what it is: an attack ad designed to urge folks to vote against Mayor Smith for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2014 because he was ‘Obama’s favorite mayor,’ ” Collins said.

And Whitten said he was legally bound to accept the commission’s findings about the purpose of the commercial.

Bergin also says there’s a key flaw in the commission’s case against his client. He contends that the commission is required to identify the candidate that the commercial was made “by or on behalf of.”

“Legacy is certainly not a candidate and was not working “on behalf of” any candidate,” Bergin said.

Whitten, in the ruling now being appealed, did acknowledge that the commission never identified on whose behalf Legacy was spending the money. But he said there’s no such requirement in the law.

“The statute does not explicitly demand names,” the judge wrote.

The trial judge also rebuffed Bergin’s contention that only the secretary of state has the power to enforce campaign laws and not the commission, which was created by voters in 1998.

“The purpose of the CCEC is to ensure that election laws are enforced without favoritism by partisan officials,” Whitten wrote.

No date has been set for the Court of Appeals to hear the case.

Judge denies state’s request to let ‘dark money’ law stand during appeal

dark-money-620

A judge won’t let the state enforce a law opening the door for more “dark money” in campaigns while it appeals his ruling that the statute is unconstitutional.

In a new ruling, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David Palmer rejected claims by attorney Tim Berg, representing the state, that it would be too confusing for organizations that the Legislature exempted from campaign finance laws in 2017 to now have to obey those laws for the 2020 election. Berg said the changes should remain in place while he asks the Court of Appeals to review Palmer’s original findings declaring the law void and unenforceable.

Palmer instead sided with attorney Jim Barton, representing the Arizona Advocacy Network which challenged the 2017 law. He told Palmer it would be wrong to run the 2020 election under a law that, at least according to the judge, is unconstitutional.

Jim Barton
Jim Barton

“Without the usefulness of the act in place, certain entities will have carte blanche to illicitly influence elections,” Barton argued.

And attorney Mary O’Grady, representing the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, the agency whose powers the 2017 law sought to curtail, said allowing the state to run the 2020 elections under the law that Palmer voided would deprive voters of information “about entities spending money to influence Arizona elections.”

The Conflict

At the heart of the legal fight is a measure approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Doug Ducey to create new exceptions to laws that require public disclosure of what people spend seeking to affect the outcome of elections.

One provision of the law allowed political parties to spend unlimited dollars on behalf of their candidates without disclosing the expenditures. It also would have allowed people to pay the legal fees of candidates without it counting against the legal limit of how much financial help they can provide.

But the most significant part of the 2017 law stripped the voter-created Citizens Clean Elections Commission to police and enforce campaign finance laws against all candidates and their donors, not just those who run with public financing. That undermined rules adopted by and enforced by the commission to require any group that is spending money to influence campaigns to publicly disclose which candidates they are supporting or opposing, and how much they are spending.

Palmer ruled in December that the Legislature was powerless to make the change given that it was voters who created the Citizens Clean Elections Commission and its system of voluntary public financing for statewide and legislative candidates.

Confusion

Berg is appealing. But in the meantime he wanted those changes approved by the Legislature to remain in place, arguing that blocking the provisions that Palmer voided would cause “confusion” among candidates and their attorneys. As proof, Berg pointed out that the Secretary of State’s Office published a campaign finance guide for candidates in September 2018, three months before Palmer’s ruling, a guide that included the provisions that the judge voided.

Barton, however, said there was plenty of time following the December ruling for the state to update its guidance for candidates and yet nothing has been done. And he noted that the primary election is still a year away.

“Thus, the secretary (of state) has ample time to correct the guide and make it available to the public,” Barton told the judge. Conversely, he argued, keeping the exemptions in the 2017 law in place, the ones Palmer said were illegally enacted, harms the public by denying them information about campaign spending.

J.D. Mesnard
J.D. Mesnard

The 2017 law, known as SB 1516, was championed by then-House Speaker J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler. He said that existing laws interfered with the rights of free speech and people to participate in the political process with their dollars without giving up their right of privacy.

But the flip side of that, according to foes of the law, is that any decrease in disclosure requirements denies voters at least some indication of who is spending money to try to influence the outcome of campaigns. That, they said, is why voters in 1998 gave broad powers to the commission to police campaign contributions.

Palmer, in his December ruling, agreed. In fact, he took a slap of sorts at state lawmakers for failing to enact such comprehensive regulations themselves.

The judge pointed out that the people who crafted the Arizona Constitution directed the first state Legislature to “enact a law providing for the general publicity of campaign contributions to and expenditures of campaign committees and candidates for public office.”

“The Legislature has never complied with that directive,” Palmer wrote. He said it took approval of the Citizens Clean Elections Act to even begin to comply.

One of the key provisions of that 1998 law, was that requirement for “independent expenditures” on behalf of or against candidates to be disclosed.

Since voters approved the law, the commission has pursued several high-profile cases against groups that have bought TV commercials attacking candidates with no disclosure of who was financing the effort. Barton said that Palmer’s ruling “confirms the Clean Elections Commission’s authority” to continue enforcing those requirements.

“We believe that that’s the answer to fighting dark money,” he said.

Bipartisan Dark Money

The other key argument against SB 1516 concerns the provision to allow political parties to spend unlimited amounts of money on behalf of their candidates without disclosure.

Katie Hobbs
Katie Hobbs

In the 2016 election, for example, the Arizona Republican Party ran TV commercials on behalf of the re-election efforts of Gov. Doug Ducey and Attorney General Mark Brnovich. But the exact amount they spent on behalf of each was never reported because of the exemption created in the 2017 law.

This became particularly significant this year because Ducey raised money not only directly for his own campaign but also took corporate and large-dollar donations − donations he could not accept personally − through a separate Ducey Victory Fund committee. And any dollars Ducey could not keep himself were given to the Arizona Republican Party, which then was free to use it to help the governor’s reelection, all without detailing how much was spent on his behalf.

This wasn’t just a practice of one party.

The Arizona Democratic Party also put $3.3 million into the effort to elect Katie Hobbs as Secretary of State. But that figure became public not through campaign finance laws. It was only because iVote, which promotes the election of Democratic secretaries of state, the group that gave the money to the state party to promote Hobbs, put out a press release detailing the expenditure.

 

Lawmaker introduces new proposal to revamp Independent Redistricting Commission

redistricting

A Republican lawmaker is reviving an effort to change the makeup of Arizona’s Independent Redistricting Commission, the body responsible for redrawing the state’s legislative and congressional district maps once a decade.

That’s fine with Joel Edman, executive director of the Arizona Advocacy Network, a progressive organization that opposed efforts to alter the IRC in 2018 because of proposed changes to the rules governing how district lines are drawn. But there was no opposition to expanding the commission from five members to nine, Edman said.

Under Rep. John Fillmore’s proposal, party leaders at the legislature would be responsible for appointing three Republican and three Democratic commissioners. Another three commissioners must be independents. The three-way split better represents Arizona voter, supporters say, since roughly a third of voters aren’t affiliated with a political party.

John Fillmore
John Fillmore

It also helps ensure the redistricting process, which will begin anew in 2021, can’t be hijacked by Republican or Democratic interests, Fillmore said.

Currently, commissioners are chosen from a pool of 25 candidates vetted by the Commission on Appellate Court Appointments. Republican and Democratic legislative leaders get to choose two commissioners each from the pool. Those four commissioners must then select a fifth candidate, typically an independent or anyone who’s neither a Republican or Democrat, to serve as chair of the IRC.

With just one independent, the process was prone to criticism that the lone non-political commissioner was biased.

“I don’t necessarily think that was true, but that was the accusation I used to hear,” Fillmore said of the last redistricting process.

Fillmore also wants the nine commissioners to elect by majority vote one of their members, of any political affiliation, to serve as chair and another as vice-chair, rather than have an independent commissioner serve as de facto chair.

And he vowed to fight any effort to allow legislators a role in drawing district maps, as former Senate President Steve Yarbrough’s 2018 legislation initially proposed.

“That’s not the whole idea of the redistricting commission,” Fillmore said. “I’m not in favor in anyway for the Legislature manipulating or having authority over that in any way.”

Edman said he also favors another change in Fillmore’s legislation, though it’s an idea he suspects most Republicans will oppose. Rather than have the Commission on Appellate Court Appointments vet potential IRC commissioners, Fillmore wants to give that authority to the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.

Clean Elections is a frequent target of GOP ire, and Republican lawmakers have a history of trying to strip the CCEC of its existing authority, not give it more power.

CCEC Executive Director Tom Collins said he appreciated Fillmore’s shout out.

“The bill’s language shows a belief that the commission’s record of bipartisan decision making makes it a better vehicle for determining IRC candidates,” Collins wrote in an email. “Mr. Fillmore has demonstrated an interest this session in making government more fair and representative, and in his view the commission can accomplish that, and as executive director, I’m pleased to have that acknowledgment.”

Collins added that CCEC will officially remain neutral on Fillmore’s legislation.

Edman will support it.

“Last time around, there was some criticism on the commission from the Appellate Court Appointments from the right, and for progressives, there’s some concern that the court is not really reflective of the state as a whole,” he said. “Clean Elections, we think, is a truly independent, nonpartisan body. Of course, I think a lot of Mr. Fillmore’s Republican colleagues feel differently.”

Fillmore said he doesn’t care what his colleagues think of Clean Elections.

Clean Elections gets a bad rap, he said, even though historically, the CCEC has been a boon for helping conservative Republicans get elected to office thanks in part to the publicly-funded campaign dollars provided to participating candidates.

“I’m here to represent my district. I’m not looking at it for partisan purposes,” Fillmore said. “I think a redistricting commission that is untied to any of that is a good thing.”

Any changes to the redistricting commission are ultimately up to voters. Fillmore’s proposal would refer a question about changing the IRC to the 2020 ballot.

Prop 306 foe warns of ‘Trojan horse’ to undermine Clean Elections

A measure Republican lawmakers put on the November ballot could determine how much Arizonans actually know about who is trying to influence political campaigns.

Anyone reviewing all the statements in support of Proposition 306 in the brochure sent to voters would think the measure is aimed at keeping publicly funded candidates from buying services from political parties.

And that’s true.

Rep. Ken Clark
Rep. Ken Clark

But the proposal also contains what Rep. Ken Clark, D-Phoenix, calls a “Trojan horse,” one that supporters say very little about.

If approved, it would allow the Governor’s Regulatory Review Council, which is entirely filled with people the governor appoints, to review – and veto – rules the bipartisan Citizens Clean Elections Commission enacted.

The reason all that is important is that the commission has taken it upon itself to enact – and enforce – rules which require certain groups seeking to influence political campaigns to disclose the sources of their funds, even as Arizona lawmakers have approved and Gov. Doug Ducey has signed legislation to shield the identity of contributors.

Ducey has depended on private donations for all of his campaigns, with much of his support coming from “dark money” groups that refuse to divulge their donors. And he is on record as opposing efforts to ban anonymous funding of political campaigns.

This fight isn’t just an academic exercise.

Last year GRRC ordered the Secretary of State to “depublish” a commission rule which dealt with the reporting of the sources of money spent by groups seeking to influence the outcome of elections. The commission responded by re-enacting the same rules, simply ignoring GRRC.

So the outcome of Proposition 306 could determine not just the future of whether the public gets a look at who is seeking to influence elections.

At the heart of the fight is the decision by voters in 1998 to create a voluntary system of public financing for candidates for statewide and legislative office. Candidates who get sufficient $5 qualifying contributions and agree not to take outside cash are entitled to set sums of money.

It is funded through a surcharge on civil, criminal and traffic fines.

The system has been fought from the beginning by the business community, particularly the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which has been the source of campaign dollars, particularly for Republicans. But while the U.S. Supreme Court voided one provision, the basic structure has been upheld.

What has made the role of the commission more significant is its conclusion that the voter-approved law gives it power not only over publicly funded candidates but also spending by outside groups on behalf of all candidates. That flies directly in the face of the Republican-controlled Legislature which has adopted various measures designed to shield groups set up as “social welfare” organizations from having to divulge the original sources of cash.

Rep. Doug Coleman, R-Apache Junction, who is listed as the author of the measure, referred questions about the change in rule oversight to Scot Mussi.

Scot Mussi
Scot Mussi

He’s the chairman of the Stop Taxpayer Money for Political Parties, the group set up to convince voters to approve Proposition 306. That same group paid for 33 individuals to put statements into the ballot pamphlet being mailed to the homes of all registered voters detailing why publicly funded candidates should not be able to buy services from political parties.

But Mussi, who did not return repeated calls seeking comment, also is the chairman of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club which actually gave the money to the campaign committee for all those statements.

More to the point, the Free Enterprise Club has been a major source of funding to support candidates it likes – and oppose those it does not like – all without disclosing where the original source of the cash.

In the 2014 election the group reported spending more than $1.7 million to influence election outcomes. That included $150,000 spent in the Republican gubernatorial primary to defeat former Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, clearing the way for Ducey’s nomination.

That same year, the group also spent more than $437,000 in hopes of getting Justin Pierce nominated for secretary of state for the GOP while spending $198,185 against Wil Cardon and $97,505 against Michele Reagan.

During the campaign, Pierce was the only one who said he’s not convinced that Arizona law should bar anonymous spending on political campaigns. He said there are legitimate reasons to allow people to get involved in politics — and write out checks — without their names being made public.

As it turned out, Reagan won the nomination anyway.

But where Mussi and the club got the money remains hidden.

Mussi’s interest in keeping the source of his organization’s finances goes beyond any changes that Prop 306 would make in oversight of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission. He also was one of the plaintiffs who successfully sued earlier this year to block a public vote on a constitutional measure which would have required disclosure of all sources of funding of independent expenditures on political campaigns.

 

Some reform-minded Dems accept dark money

money

A handful of Arizona Democrats running to replace incumbent Republicans in swing districts have high-minded aspirations of expanding the state’s Clean Elections program and limiting money in politics.

But before they can change government, they have to make it into government. And for candidates running in tough races, that means using traditional financing and accepting that the dark money they oppose on principle is going to be used in their campaigns.

In the Scottsdale-based Legislative District 23, Democratic Senate candidate Seth Blattman lists government reform as one of his three top priorities, up there with education and improving the state’s economy. And if he only had one term in office to get everything done, he said he would focus on the government reform measures, including expanding Clean Elections and strengthening government ethics laws – he said he believes systemic change to government will be the only way to ensure that education funding continues without Democrats in power.

As a candidate, Blattman is running with traditional financing, not Clean Elections funding, and is willing to accept campaign contributions from corporations and special interest groups. It’s a matter of practicality, he said.

“There’s no secret that the more money you have, the more you can spend on campaigning and getting your message out there,” Blattman said. “So, to play by a separate set of rules, handicapping your own self, would be self-defeating in the end. The goal is to get elected so we can actually make some substantial reforms to the system.”

Seth Blattmen
Seth Blattmen

To that end, he’s not too bothered when he sees outside groups, including ones that aren’t required to disclose their donors, intercede in the LD23 Senate race. One such group, Progress Arizona, has spent nearly $10,000 attacking incumbent Republican Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita so far this cycle, according to campaign finance records filed with the Secretary of State’s Office.

“As a principle, you know I’m against outside groups spending money on these races,” Blattman said. “In my particular race though, obviously I’m looking to win so I’m not upset when I see them advertising negative videos against Michelle Ugenti-Rita.”

Candidates from both parties running across the state have been the beneficiaries of hundreds of thousands of dollars in outside spending, from state and national political action committees that do disclose their funding sources and from dark money groups that do not, but only one party has made it its mission to do away with dark money.

So far, the biggest Democratic outside spenders in Arizona legislative races have been Progress Arizona, a left-wing advocacy group that does not disclose its donors, and Forward Majority Action Arizona, the state-level branch of a political action committee whose national funders can be found in federal campaign finance records.

Retired Army Col. Felicia French, the Democrat running for the state Senate in northern Arizona’s Legislative District 6, and her Republican opponent, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Wendy Rogers, are in the race that has drawn the most outside spending so far. Republican groups have spent more than $90,000 to attack French, who came within 600 votes of winning a spot in the state House in 2018.

Rogers, meanwhile, has been the target of more than $91,000 in critical outside spending, the vast majority of which came from conservative groups during her bitter primary battle with Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake. Campaign finance records filed with the Secretary of State’s Office reflect roughly $5,000 spent against her by Forward Majority Action, but money Progress Arizona has spent since the primary on Facebook ads and websites set up to attack the Rogers campaign has not been reported.

French said she dislikes negative campaigning and outside spending in the race, but she has no control over what PACs and independent expenditure groups can do. Candidates are legally barred from coordinating with independent expenditure groups.

Felicia French
Felicia French

“Obviously I don’t have control if it’s from my party or somebody else just because they want to bring to light negative aspects about my opponent,” French said. “But I really don’t like it, of course, when it’s against me because none of it’s been true.”

If she wins election and gets to work on campaign finance legislation, French said she ideally would love to see mandatory Clean Elections funding for every candidate. Right now, candidates in contested races can’t afford to run with Clean Elections funding because their opponents are easily able to raise far more than the $18,121 for the primary and $27,182 for the general given to Clean Elections candidates.

“You’re riding a regular single speed bicycle while your opponent has a mini motorcycle or scooter,” French said. “There’s no way you can do that.”

She also wants greater transparency and disclosure of where campaign contributions come from and how they’re spent. French and her campaign treasurer include a detailed memo line with every campaign transaction that includes check numbers, store names and descriptions of items purchased for the campaign. None of that is required by law, but French described it as fastidiousness left over from her 32 years in the Army.

Overall, Democrats running in swing districts described an indifference to outside spending intended to help them or hurt their Republican opponents. Legislative District 17 Senate candidate Ajlan Kurdoglu, who regularly criticizes Republican incumbent Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, as being beholden to special interests and dark money, said he appreciated the support his own campaign has received from outside groups spending to help him or hurt Mesnard.

“Money in politics has gotten out of hand,” Kurdoglu said via text. “Unfortunately, the current majority in the AZ State Legislature neglected to take action to deal with this issue. Actually, they made it even more serious with their action. When I am in the Senate, with a Democratic majority I will work with everyone to solve this problem.”

J.D. Mesnard
J.D. Mesnard

So far, Forward Majority Action Arizona and Progress Arizona have spent more than $21,000 attacking Mesnard and Forward Majority and Save Our Schools Arizona have spent $11,000 to advocate for Kurdoglu’s election.

Mesnard said he accepts that he and legislative Democrats have different opinions on campaign finance, but he gets frustrated when people show selective outrage over money in politics

“When it’s benefiting their opponent, they’re all upset,” Mesnard said. “When they’re benefiting, they’re surprisingly muted — or maybe not really surprisingly, but they’re muted.”

In Legislative District 20, where outside groups aligned with Democrats have spent more than $50,000 attacking incumbent Republican Reps. Shawnna Bolick and Anthony Kern, Democratic candidate Judy Schwiebert said she’s only paying attention to her own campaign, not what else is happening in the race.

“I don’t know what other people are doing,” she said. “I’m trying to keep my head down and run my race, which is all about listening and working together to make sure that we’re getting things done.”