Two weeks ago, yet another out-of-state mailing – among zillions – hit Montana mailboxes. However, this latest spurred howls from Democrats, with Secretary of State Linda McCulloch filing a formal complaint with the Commissioner of Political Practices. Even Senator Jon Tester weighed in with a letter accusing those responsible of voter “manipulation,” demanding disclosure of the funding and identification of the holder of the mailing permit.
At issue was a “voter guide” card concerning Montana’s Supreme Court races. At first glance, it appeared a product of Republican boiler-room dark money, but the truth is stranger.
The card was mailed as part of a joint Stanford/Dartmouth “Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections” project, DIME for short, funded by the liberal Hewlett Foundation. It was a targeted partial mailing, sent to some precincts but not to others in order to see if there would be blips in voter turnout and/or results. Odd, yes. Evil? No. Would I love to see the results of this experiment? Heck yeah!
Now, I’ve known of DIME for a while. In a nutshell, the colleges put decades of campaign contribution records into a matrix, creating “common-space campaign finance scores.” By doing so, DIME can determine candidate ideologies, basically by patterning donor ideologies.
When donors max out to certain politicians like clockwork, isn’t that information other voters can use? What about the PACs they support? What if these same donors just happen to donate to “nonpartisan” judicial races on the side? Might such information be useful to otherwise-ignorant peasants trying to vote their lowly interests?
Absolutely – in 2012 Judgepedia used DIME data to rank Montana’s Supreme Court: America’s sixth-most-liberal, just behind Washington and a ways ahead of Vermont. Judgepedia even rated Montana’s sitting justices, including current incumbent candidates Rice and Wheat. Are the ratings fair? See for yourself – no wonder certain folks would like to discredit the DIME researchers – but that’s not their only motive.
After all, in the 2012 U.S. Senate race between Jon Tester (D), Denny Rehberg (R), and Dan Cox (L), Montana Hunters and Anglers Leadership PAC (bankrolled by the League of Conservation Voters) spent $146,000 on a last-week mailing against Rehberg. The mailing basically told sportsmen that Dan Cox (who’d raised about four grand total) was their guy, the “real conservative.” The real senders were protected from scrutiny by their Las Vegas bulk mailing permit.
As big outside dark money, the Cox mailer is an utter classic. Tester’s margin of victory was 18,072 – Cox scored 31,892 votes, 12,559 more votes than Libertarian David Kaiser scored in his U.S. House race.
Rather than complain about the Cox mailer, Tester confessed to ProPublica the mailer and other “progressive” dark money stunts were “helpful.” Secretary McCulloch? Mum’s the word – although Republicans sure griped, myself included.
In the 2014 cycle, it turns out we’ve enjoyed another questionable mailing in the Supreme Court race, which hit our mailboxes a few days before the DIME card.
The so-called “Montana Voter Guide for Judicial Elections” basically cloned the official Voter Information Pamphlet (VIP) we all got from Secretary McCulloch – glossy outside, newsprint inside – produced by Montanans for Liberty and Justice (MTLAJ).
The Center for Public Integrity (a leftish-but-not-nuts political watchdog) terms MTLAJ a “political committee backed by trial lawyers.” They’re right – MTLAJ’s website is registered through GoDaddy to Al Smith at 32 Ewing Street in Helena, where MTLAJ is also headquartered – Smith is executive director of the Montana Trial Lawyers Association. Um, why the front group, trial lawyers?
As for funding, the Center estimated MTLAJ had spent at least $65,200 on TV ads thus far. The Center had to guess because MTLAJ had not yet revealed a single donor to the Montana political practices office. MTLAJ’s only state finance report thus far made was a late-expenditure “C7E” report, $30,726 to, ahem, out-of-state Moxie Media in Seattle for postage (the “guide”) on October 21.
Has Senator Tester shown concern over MTLAJ’s lack of disclosure? No, and ditto for Secretary McCulloch. Now you all know why – unfortunately, on this day after Election Day, too late to matter. I’m sorry.