PHOENIX β Arizona voters may get the last word on sweeping legislation that alters the rules for βdark moneyβ and other anonymous donations to politicians and ballot measures.
Rep. Ken Clark, D-Phoenix, who led the unsuccessful attempt to defeat the measure earlier this week, said he is setting up meetings with groups that would be interested in referring SB 1516 to the November ballot.
That includes former Attorney General Terry Goddard, who had launched an initiative drive to enact new state laws forcing greater disclosure of who is influencing elections. That campaign has been suspended while Goddard looks for donations after the initial source of funding dried up.
Clark actually could have an easier path to getting the issue before voters.
Goddard, in proposing a new law through the initiative process, would need 225,963 valid signatures on petitions by July 7 to qualify for the ballot.
But Clark is proposing is a referendum on what the Legislature has approved. And that takes just 75,321 signatures.
Potentially more significant, the Arizona Constitution gives referendum organizers 90 days after the end of the legislative session to circulate petitions. At the rate the session is going, that deadline is not likely to occur before the middle of July.
Thereβs more.
If Clark gets the signatures, the legislation is placed on βholdβ until voters get a chance to weigh in. And that means groups seeking to defeat it have to live under existing disclosure laws and not the looser rules that SB 1516 proposes.
And thereβs one more thing that could work in Clarkβs favor.
By law, the referendum is set up as a ratification. That means it takes a βyesβ vote to approve what the Legislature has done.
And political consultants generally agree that when people are confused, they tend to vote βno.β
The legislation now awaiting action by Gov. Doug Ducey contains a series of changes in campaign finance laws. These include:
- Surrendering the stateβs right to decide if a group is organized for a political purpose to how it is classified by the Internal Revenue service;
- Lifting all limits on what individuals can spend on parties to raise funds for favored candidates;
- Overturning a 1986 voter-approved law that prohibits candidates from transferring money between themselves;
- Repealing all criminal provisions of the law with a promise to put them back in β next year.
Clark said he is still formulating how best to get the message to voters that they should kill SB 1516. But he said it should not be hard.
βI think the public knows exactly what this is about,β he said. Clark cited polls by both the Morrison Institute and on behalf of Goddardβs group, both of which he said show a vast majority of Arizonans want limits on βdark money.β
Ducey has not said what he will do with the measure now on his desk.
He was the beneficiary of outside money in his successful 2014 race.
Reports on file with the Secretary of Stateβs Office show $1.8 million in outside money being spent in his favor. That includes nearly $700,000 from American Encore.
That group is the successor to the Koch brothers financed Center to Protect Patient Rights run by Phoenix political consultant Sean Noble. The group is organized under the Internal Revenue Code laws as a βsocial welfareβ organization says it does not have to disclose its donors.
Its ties to Ducey and Arizona politics go back to 2012 when Ducey was leading the campaign to defeat Proposition 204, which would have implemented a permanent 1-cent sales tax, largely to fund education.
American Encore separately spent another $767,000 in ads attacking Fred DuVal, Duceyβs Democrat opponent.
The biggest source of anti-DuVal ads was the nearly $5 million spent by the Republican Governorβs Association.
Most of that groupβs money comes from across the nation, put into a single fund from which RGA can draw. But there are some large sources of Arizona dollars that can be identified.
That includes $100,000 from Paradise Valley resident Richard Burke, chairman of the board of UnitedHealth Group, and an identical amount from Robert Parsons, CEO of YAM Worldwide, a private lending and investment firm based in Scottsdale.
