Sunday, Jul. 20, 2008

Sunshine needed on last-minute campaign giving

IN THEORY, VOTERS can find out who gives money to a candidate for public office right up to Election Day. The reality is much different.

Although candidates are required by law to keep their books up-to-date and “open to public inspection upon request” during the entire quarter in which a vote is held, the last pre-election report they file with the state doesn’t have to include any donations made during the final 20 days before the election.

The practical result is that if a donor wants to hide his support for a candidate until after the vote, he can almost certainly do that.

That is precisely what the would-be puppet-master of our state Legislature, libertarian millionaire investor Howie Rich, has done. Blogger Ross Shealy has so far found 18 candidates in the June primary who received tens of thousands of dollars each during that blackout period from Mr. Rich, his various business interests and the same small group of like-minded associates. In some cases, a handful of donations were made early enough to be included in the pre-election reports, but the money spigot was turned wide open once it was safe from prying eyes. In seven races, there was no trace of such money in the pre-election reports.

Among the findings of Mr. Shealy, whose primary purpose in life seems to be exposing the activities of Mr. Rich and others who seek to divert public money to private schools:

• Katrina Shealy, who lost to Sen. Jake Knotts, received $5,000 from Rich et al. that she had to report on her May campaign disclosure report. During the blackout period, she received another $69,000.

• Lee Bright, who defeated Rep. Scott Talley for an open Senate seat in Spartanburg County, received $50,000 — all during the blackout period.

• Ken Roach, who lost a race for Mr. Talley’s House seat, received $16,000 — 69 percent of his total contributions — all during the blackout period.

Asking candidates to do nothing more than make their donation records available for public inspection during the final days of a campaign could be justified back when the law was passed, in the pre-Internet era. It no longer can be; nor should anyone try.

As Mr. Rich has reminded us (we first saw such shenanigans back when the video poker barons were the ones trying to intimidate our Legislature into submission), the law allows candidates to mislead voters. In some cases, the recipients of his largess had been accused during the blackout period of being beholden to him, and they claimed they had received little or no money from New York. In other cases, no one even thought to ask, because the candidates had been trained either to avoid talking about school “choice” or else to be vague about it.

It’s one thing for voters to elect someone knowing that his campaign was funded by a handful of people with a clear agenda that the candidate has endorsed. But when voters who make a reasonable effort to find out about the candidates have this information withheld from them, and thus believe there’s nothing to know, our law has failed them, and it needs to be changed.

There’s nothing burdensome about filing electronic reports of donations received during those last 20 days before an election. The Legislature should require that of all candidates, and restore the power of sunlight to the pre-election blackout period.