Arizona Republican Party and its Tucson city council candidates violate campaign-finance laws – so where’s the investigation?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Last Thursday, Secretary of State Ken Bennett announced that three independent expenditure committees active in the Phoenix mayoral and council elections will be audited to crackdown on special interests that may be trying to skirt campaign finance laws. Arizona to audit 3 campaign groups:

Bennett said Thursday that groups selected for the audit will be asked to give up accounting records and show that they have spent most of their money doing something else other than influencing an election.

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The complaints have mainly come amid two big elections approaching Nov. 8: the highly contentious Phoenix mayor's race between Wes Gullett and Greg Stanton, and the state's first-ever recall of a legislator, involving Senate President Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, and challenger Jerry Lewis.

The secretary of state also said he will forward three more campaign-finance violations to the state attorney general for enforcement:

– Citizens United for Progress, a pro-Lewis group, for failing to give the secretary of state notice that it spent more than $2,500 on mailers.

– Residents for a Better Arizona, which backed Eric Sloan in the District 5 Phoenix City Council election, for not providing information to demonstrate that its purpose isn't primarily to influence elections.

– Americans for Responsible Leadership, which opposed Bryan Jeffries in the District 2 council race, and was found violating the same laws as Residents for a Better Arizona.

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Bennett's office will audit only three of the 18 groups registered with the state. Independent expenditure organizations active in the Phoenix mayor and council races, however, will not be part of the audit, because those groups file with the City Clerk.

The Phoenix City Clerk has forwarded complaints about several of those groups for Bennett's office to review.

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Bennett said he hopes to have the audits completed before the Nov. 8 election.

Secretary Bennett also referred Olivia Cortes to the Attorney General's office for investigation of her campaign-finance violations in the Pearce Recall election.

Which raises two questions about the City of Tucson mayor and council elections. Has the Tucson City Clerk forwarded any complaints to Secretary Bennett's office regarding the campaign nondisclosures by the Arizona Republican Party and its candidates? Is the Arizona GOP illegally 'earmarking' funds for Tucson City Council elections? And will Secretary Bennett conduct an audit before the November 8 election and/or refer these campaign-finance law violations to the state Attorney General for enforcement?

I understand that the Pima County Democratic Party has filed complaints with the Tucson City Clerk. So where's the investigation?

Here are the latest press releases from the Pima County Democratic Party:

Tucson City Council candidate Jennifer Rawson is making a joke of her promise of accountability and transparency as she failed to disclose how much she is paying for her TV ad buys.

Her commercials are up and in regular rotation in living rooms across Tucson and she says her campaign paid for them, yet she did not include it in her campaign finance report. Nor did she include the ads as debt or in-kind contributions. So the Pima County Democratic Party has filed the accompanying complaint with the Tucson City Clerk.

Increasingly, Republicans appear to be running in the 2011 election on the Karl Rove model predicated on the idea “anything goes” short of getting indicted. They've illegally spammed city employees with fund-raising e-mails, requested matching funds they haven't been entitled to and improperly counted contributions that did not legally count toward matching funds. And the Arizona Republican Party filed a report with the city clerk that claimed it started with no money, raised no money but still managed to spend $141,000, in an apparent effort to hide their donors.

“We're losing count of how many ways the Republicans have violated campaign laws,” said Pima County Democratic Party Chairman Jeff Rogers. “This is a pretty good indicator of what kind of council members they would be — the kind that thinks one set of rules applies to them and another applies to the rest of us.”

Arizona Revised Statutes 16-915 requires that all disbursements be included on the proper campaign finance report. Rawson's ads were paid for prior to the initial airing on Oct. 17. The reporting period ended Oct. 19, with no mention of these ads or any reference to debt to a third party, if the ads were paid for by a vendor.

“We’re sick and tired of filing these complaints but we’re more sick and tired of these Republicans breaking the rules that our candidates faithfully follow,” Rogers said. “This isn't some minor oversight. This is $24,000 at two stations alone. This is failing to disclose the bulk of her expenditures.”

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And another press release:

If you start with zero dollars in the bank and you raise zero dollars, how much money do you have to spend on the Tucson city election?

For 99.99 percent of us governed by cold, hard math, the answer, of course, is zero dollars.

If you are the Arizona Republican Party, the answer is $141,398.50.

Unless they have learned some strange Lehman Brothers accounting tricks or have mastered alchemy, they really don’t want to say where they got the money in the reporting period. The Pima County Democratic Party is — slack-jawed — calling on the three Tucson City Council candidates and Mayoral candidate Rick Grinnell to explain where their Phoenician benefactors got their money.

“Any claim that the Republican candidates believe in transparency and accountability is absolutely shattered if they won't reveal where they got $141,398.50 in political help from Phoenix political bosses,” said Pima County Democratic Party Chairman Jeff Rogers. “No one else in the world, outside of hedge fund managers can leverage zero dollars into $141,298.50.”

This comes the day after Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett warned political groups that they must reveal their campaign contributions regardless of a recent Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited corporate cash into campaigns. Bennett was worried that new groups might not understand state law governing state and local campaigns. But the state Republican Party has been around for a while.

“What are they trying to hide?” Rogers asked. “They couldn't have gotten an illegally ‘earmarked’ campaign contribution from a donor could they? It’s worth pointing out that the state party is also drowning in red ink, showing debts of nearly $250,000. How can they be in debt if they can make money out of thin air?”