Cook: Ethics Commission Ruling Exposes Legal Campaign Slush Funds

Today in dismissing a complaint against Attorney General Leslie Rutledge the Arkansas Ethics Commission may have exposed a massive loophole in our state’s campaign finance law.

The complaint, filed by Matt Campbell of the Blue Hog Report, alleged that Rutledge illegally coordinated the production of television ads by the Republican Attorneys General Association. .

Rutledge never disputed the coordination and told Talk Business & Politics the ads were done “legally”.

The Ethics Commission obviously agreed with Rutledge’s argument as they voted 4-0 to dismiss the complaint. The Commission discussed this case, along with a few other cases, for about five hours, I know since I waited in the lobby the entire time waiting for a ruling.

Campaign finance law can be confusing and voters often don’t care about it since they tend to think all the money is from the mob anyway. But today’s ruling is immensely important since it essentially means state candidates can run two funded political campaigns at once, but only one of them is truly regulated by state law.

When candidates raise or spend money they’re legally required to report these activities, giving voters an opportunity to see who is funding their campaign and how their campaign money is spent.

However, organizations known as “independent expenditure committees” can raise and spend money in support of a candidate, but are often not required to report their information through a complex series of laws. Congressional and U.S. Senate campaigns are legally prohibited from coordinating with or even talking to “independent expenditure” campaigns.

It appears the Republicans have found a major loophole in Arkansas’s campaign finance law. Consider this. Arkansas candidates can no longer accept funds from businesses or labor groups, but candidates could encourage those groups to contribute to an independent expenditure campaign which are largely unregulated. Or they can tell their donors who’ve already maxed out to their campaign to contribute to the independent expenditure committee, thus getting around the $2,000 per person cap.

Then the candidate’s campaign writes the TV script for the independent expenditure campaign and the IE produces and pays for the ad. This is apparently legal as long as the ad doesn’t specifically advocate voting for or against a candidate.

It amounts to a campaign slush fund. Legal,yes, but it sure stinks to high heaven.

This is basically what Leslie Rutledge did last year, she ran two campaigns for Attorney General, but we only know who funded one of them. Did some fat cat fully fund Rutledge’s infamous “Salt Shaker” TV ad to get in good with the future Attorney General? We’ll never know for sure since the RAGA can legally hide donations.

It reeks of shadiness and lack of ethics, but it’s legal under Arkansas law.

The one silver lining is this case came to light in the middle of a legislative session. Legislation should be introduced expressly prohibiting candidates and their campaigns from having any contact with independent expenditure campaign committees.

We should also significantly increase the fine amount that the Ethics Commission can levy. Even if the Ethics Commission had fined Rutledge it would have likely only amounted to a few thousand dollars. The RAGA spent about $400,000 on her behalf so a $3, 000 fine would have been a good return on the money.

Hopefully this massive campaign finance loophole will be fixed this session since voters deserve to know who is funding candidate’s campaigns.

It’s time to end these campaign slush funds.