Five years ago, Arizona’s Politics helped report efforts by a “dirty trick” by the National Republican Congressional Committee (“NRCC”) against candidates nationwide, including the three Arizona swing-seat Democrats. The FEC finally gave the NRCC a pass and opened the file today.
The so-called attack microsites launched against Reps. Kyrsten Sinema, Ann Kirkpatrick and Ron Barber (and a couple of dozen other Democrats around the country) spoofed the candidates’ websites and tried to trick Googlers into donating to the NRCC.
National articles found a couple of the Arizona spoofs, and Arizona’s Politics located the third in February 2014. A follow-up later that month found that the NRCC had changed the donation pages to reduce the trickery level and to add security to its spoofs. (There are lots of images, ironies and fun facts in the older articles that will not be repeated here; please check out the links!)
One month later, national campaign finance watchdogs Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 filed complaints
