We saw the rather cloying article giving Craig Pridemore the journalistic equivlent of a "reach around" for his campaign bill.
I pointed out a little history here, where Pridemore effectively became that which he claims to dispise. But taking it a step further, I'll let Peter Callahan at the Tacoma News Tribune rip the rag's favorite campaign bill to pieces.
All of Callahan's conclusions are "speculation," of course. And we know that the democratian doesn't allow speculation about democrats... so we will never see either anything investigative about this... and having engaged in the equivlent of journalistic sex with Pridemore, we're likely to never see any critique of yet another worthless effort to reform campaigning or ethics in the legislature.
Just sayin'.
More:Campaign finance reform? Amateurs could circumvent this
About 10 minutes.About 10 minutes.
An hour at most.
That’s how long it would take even a marginally skilled political operative to circumvent the new campaign finance rules contained in Senate Bill 5021.
The bill began life as the Legislature’s response to disgust over a pair of especially sleazy tactics used in the 2010 campaign.
One happened in Everett when a batch of liberal special interests created a stealth campaign to defeat a Democrat deemed not liberal enough. It worked, leading to charges against Moxie Media and its main principal ,Lisa Collins MacLean, for failing to file campaign finance reports on time.
The second episode involved a local branch of a national Republican effort to defeat Democrats. It too skirted campaign finance disclosure laws to make sure no one knew the source of the attacks until the election was long over. Americans for Prosperity took down a few state Senate incumbents and is currently being investigated by the Public Disclosure Commission. Its director, Kirby Wilbur, has since been elected chairman of the state Republican Party.
While arguing that Nick Harper – the beneficiary of Moxie Media’s campaign – should be allowed to take his seat, Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown promised a tough new law. The Vancouver Democrat charged with that task was realistic about the challenge.
“Alas, whenever you have regulations put into place and a great deal of money involved, you will have people who will spend a great deal of time trying to avoid those regulations,” Sen. Craig Pridemore told his Government Operations Committee when it took up the bill.
“As they go forward and find loopholes in our existing system, it is our duty to move forward and close those loopholes.”
Pridemore’s original bill at least presented a challenge. But it was weakened at every stop it made in the Senate and House.
For example, Pridemore wanted to restrict, if not ban, the transfer of money from one political action committee to another. That is how Moxie Media hid the actual backers of the effort to help a conservative draw away votes from incumbent Sen. Jean Berkey, pushing her into a third-place primary finish and elimination. MacLean created dozens of committees with pleasant sounding names to shuffle money from labor and trial lawyers among them, making it nearly impossible to detect the actual source of funding.
But SB 5021 has now been weakened so that rather than banning transfers, it allows them as long as the donating committee has at least 10 members who have donated at least $10.
A pro like MacLean could put together such committees in 10 minutes. Someone less skilled might consume a whole hour. That’s what now passes for “a great deal of time.”
Steve Breaux works for the Washington Public Interest Research Group but has run campaigns and is a former Senate Democratic staff member. He has been pushing for a tough bill and thinks SB 5021 should be adopted.
But he is under no illusions that it is a tough response to Moxie and AFP.
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