Consider campaign ad source – if you can

(PNI) Americans for Responsible Leadership this week dumped $350,000 into the campaign to kill this apparently unthinkable idea of changing the way we elect our leaders.

So who, you might ask, are the Americans for Responsible Leadership? These Americans who feel so committed to our present system of electing ideologues that they would pour this kind of money into defeating Proposition 121?

I can't tell you. Americans for Responsible Leadership are also Americans Who Believe That You Don't Need To Know Who They Are, You Just Need To Vote How They Want.

And so, they have thus far funneled $450,000 into the campaign to kill the "top two" primary initiative, according to documents on file with the Arizona Secretary of State's Office. And an additional $500,000 into defeating Proposition 204, the sales-tax hike for education and roads.

And they've sunk a startling $11million into defeating a pair of California props -- one a tax increase and the other a measure aimed at limiting the political activity of unions.

Had they incorporated in some other state, the Americans would likely have to tell us who they are. But because this is Arizona -- where talk of transparency is mostly just that, talk -- we have no right to know where the money is coming from to sell us on killing these initiatives.

Thank you, Arizona Legislature.

Americans for Responsible Leadership was incorporated by Robert Graham of Phoenix, who owns a wealth-management company and is campaigning to become the next chairman of the state Republican Party.

The other directors are Eric Wnuck of Cave Creek, who runs a medical-imaging company and briefly ran for Congress in 2010, and Steve Nickolas of Scottsdale, who owns a bottled-water company.

Graham didn't return my call to talk about his covert operation.

It is one of a parade of so-called non-profits that have sprung up since a landmark 2010 Supreme Court decision said corporations have a First Amendment right to spend as much as they want on political campaigns.

Because the Legislature has thus far declined to force these covert corporations to disclose their contributors, we are left to wonder who it is who so badly wants to defeat the top-two primary.

Lest you think that's the only way special interests are concealing their attempts to manipulate your vote, think again.

Last week, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Crane McClennen gouged another galling loophole into campaign-finance laws, ruling that the Committee for Justice & Fairness didn't have to disclose who it really was when it ran an attack ad against Tom Horne in the final weeks of his 2010 campaign for attorney general.

In that ad, the Justice & Fairness people informed us that Horne, as a state legislator, had voted against tougher penalties for rape and as state superintendent had allowed a pornography-viewing teacher back into the classroom.

"Tell Superintendent Horne to protect children, not people who harm them," the ad said, just weeks before the election.

What it didn't say was who the Committee for Justice & Fairness was.

Had curious voters dug into Internal Revenue Service records, they would have found that Justice & Fairness was really the Democratic Attorney General Association.

Both the Maricopa County Attorney's Office and a state administrative-law judge determined that the independent committee should have registered with the state and filed campaign-finance reports.

However, the group's attorney, Tom Irvine, countered that Justice & Fairness didn't need to tell us who they really were because they weren't advocating Horne's defeat.

They were simply educating voters about "the important issue of protecting Arizona schoolchildren from statutory rape and from teachers who view pornographic materials in the classroom."

Which would be laughable, except that last week, Judge McClennen agreed with Irvine, calling the law requiring such disclosure "unconstitutional."

Irvine said the group didn't have to register because it never used any of the so-called "magic words" that constitute express advocacy -- vote for, elect, reject, etc.

The more issue-oriented sort of "electioneering," he said, is not regulated in Arizona.

"The reason they didn't register here is the Arizona Legislature has chosen not to have electioneering committees regulated at all," he said. "So, it's a choice the Arizona Legislature made."

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said it's clear the group was advocating for Horne's defeat and thus should have had to disclose who was behind the ads. He plans to appeal McClennen's ruling.

"People need to know who's doing what," he told me.

He's right.

Especially now when we're getting "No on 121" ads asking, "Why are special interests trying to eliminate your vote?" and warning, "Don't let special interests eliminate your election choice in Arizona."

Ads, I might add, that are being paid for by special interests.

We just don't know whose (interests, that is), beyond the fact that they are Americans and apparently for "Responsible Leadership."

I'd say consider the source.

The problem is, you can't.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizona republic.com or 602-444-8635.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

Posted

View the original article here