Dark money groups have already poured more than $5 million into Arizona’s elections this cycle. These organizations, carefully constructed to protect the identities of their contributors, play a heavy hand in influencing election outcomes.
This is because Arizona places no restrictions on the dark money groups, and there is no legal obligation to reveal contributors. As a result, Arizona is quickly becoming the Cayman Islands for moving dark money.
I’ve investigated this kind of activity before. As Arizona’s attorney general, I spent eight years going after drug cartels by following the money. Our team dug through cartel money transfers and seized millions of dollars. Dark money groups are just money launderers by another name. They are moving money, often vast sums of it, while carefully concealing its original source.
Clearly, dark money damages our democracy. An important way to evaluate a candidate is by considering who supports him or her. Endorsements are scrutinized and contributors analyzed for evidence of what direction the candidate is leaning. But by hiding major contributors, dark money groups are deceiving voters.
Since those behind the dark money groups are not accountable for their statements, they can — and will — say anything. How can voters hold dark money groups responsible for any half-truths or outright lies they put in their ads?
One strategy pursued by the Arizona Clean Elections Commission is to determine whether these groups are actually engaged in the social welfare work their nonprofit organizing documents claim that they are. In many cases, the large contributions designed to influence elections significantly outweigh any educational or public benefit expenditure. Such organizations are really political and under Arizona law should disclose their donors like an Independent Expenditure or a Political Action Committee, or any other political organization.
There is a path to fighting these groups, and it’s by going after dark money the same way I went after money laundering for drug cartels as Arizona’s Attorney General, with good law enforcements procedures, careful research, and dogged determination. In addition, the Secretary of State could publicize the names of groups that continue to conceal the original source of their funds and what candidates they are attempting to help. This could go a long way to diminish their protection of unlimited political spending.
Arizona desperately needs an effective anti-dark money law, one that requires all politically active groups to disclose their donors, just as every other political contributor has to do.
We can’t wait for political parties or partisan caucuses to sort things out – they probably never will. In the last session, the Arizona legislature made an unsubstantial, token gesture at reigning in these groups. Feeble as it was, it never even got a floor vote in either chamber, because some politicians have too much to lose. Ultimately, it may be necessary to draft a ballot initiative to give Arizona voters the chance to stop dark money once and for all.
Fighting dark money isn’t a Republican or a Democratic issue – it’s not partisan at all. Dark money contaminates the election process for both sides, and it must be stopped.
Terry Goddard is a Clean Elections candidate running to bring his record of effective public service as Arizona’s Attorney General, Mayor of Phoenix, federal housing official, CAP Board Member and teacher, to the Secretary of State’s Office. As Arizona’s Attorney General, he received national recognition for his work protecting Arizona consumers and vows to do the same for Arizona voters.
Though it is certainly heartening to hear candidates advocating for clean elections through better laws and regulations, the solution to secret money’s corrosive influence has to be a free market one. Otherwise, conservatives will dismiss the effort as government oppression and an attempt by Democrats to gain an advantage.
What we need is a Sunlight Foundation with teeth.
We need an organization that will go after these groups and aggressively shame them in the markets where they advertise. It would monitor political ads and trace back the funding. Where found, it would post the information on its website. Where impossible to find, it would air counter ads showing clips of the dark ads and calling them out for being, in all probability, evil, out of state carpetbaggers telling the good citizens of the State of _______ what to do.
It could fund itself by selling a badge, like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, that groups could integrate into their ads. All the groups would have to do is submit complete funding information and pay a fee. Then, even if voters don’t go to the database to see who funded a particular ad, they know they have the opportunity.
If it caught on, groups would come under increasing pressure to release their information. To establish a critical mass, the organization could give away the first round of badges to groups that already disclose their donors.
It’s kind of like extortion for a good cause.
(Edited to add paragraph breaks, so as not to appear to be a crazy person.)
What are the odds that the “money laundering” appellation is mostly metaphorical? It seems to me that with all the consulting fees and commissions and so forth the way would be open for someone with illegal proceeds to launder might also consider establishing some dark-money political committees and then arranging to spend the maximum on overhead and the minimum on actual ad buys. (TPM reported a cycle or two ago on questionable fund-raising companies that gin up candidates to raise money for and then take almost all of the contributions for overhead, so imagine the same thing, only with the contributor(s) a willing part of the scam.)
Yep, I thought that’s where the article was going but it didn’t get there.
The Kochs of our nation will exhaust every last avenue to do their dirty work and then invent some more.
The Supreme Court is the key and the solution. If we get rid of the joke that leads the court now and his jesters and at least put in place non-partisan judges that truly care about America, then we are half way to taking back our democracy.
Remember, conservatives installed Roberts and his crew to do exactly what they are doing, not to rule with a balanced scale.
No surprise here, considering, the corrupt Wicked Witch of the West is governor.