On Wednesday, an attorney for the top two state Republican lawmakers asked a judge to block the implementation of a 2022 law designed to disclose the sources of campaign donations.
House Speaker Ben Toma and Senate President Warren Petersen argue the voter-approved Prop. 211 gives the Citizens Clean Elections Commission powers not approved by the Legislature.
But Assistant Attorney General Nathan Arrowsmith says Arizona’s constitution gives citizens the power to pass their own laws.
"It's essentially a case where they're saying they don't like what the voters have done — and they don't like that they can't change it. But, again, the Legislature isn't injured simply because they don't like how the voters have exercised legislative power," Arrowsmith said.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Ryan says he will have a ruling by the end of the year.
Approved by voters in November by a nearly 3-1 margin, the initiative says that any organization that spends more than $50,000 on a statewide race — half that for other contests — has to publicly disclose anyone who has given at least $5,000.
More to the point, the measure, crafted in part by former state Attorney General Terry Goddard, says those recipient groups have to trace the money back to the original source.
Arizona always has had requirements for disclosure of political spending. The state's first Constitution actually required lawmakers to approve election disclosure laws to publicize "all campaign contributions to, and expenditures of campaign committees and candidates for public office.''
But attorney David Kolker, representing the backers of the initiative, said that was undermined in a 2010 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United case. That ruling enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds to influence elections.
"Big spenders have found it much easier to pass millions of dollars through various kinds of intermediaries before it's spent on election ads,'' he told Ryan. "And so disclosure of donors can become almost meaningless if all it reveals is the name of a front group, like 'Americans for a Brighter Future' instead of the true, original sources of funding.''
Lawmakers also challenged the decision by voters to create the Citizens Clean Elections Commission itself in 1998, a system that both limited campaign donations and provided public funding to candidates who did not take special interest money.
The Legislature lost that argument. But a separate lawsuit that went to the Supreme Court voided a provision of the law that had provided matching funds to publicly funded candidates when those with private donations exceeded certain limits.
