Two years ago, after several attempts, an initiative exposing who’s behind the dark money in our politics finally made it to the ballot. Voters passed it overwhelmingly.
It’s been challenged a few times since and, just this week, the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld it again, saying it serves an important government interest in curbing corruption and ensuring voters know who is trying to sway elections.
This was the first election that law has been in place, so what kind of difference has it made?
KJZZ's Wayne Schutsky with our Politics Desk joined The Show to explain.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Hi there, Wayne.
WAYNE SCHUTSKY: Good morning.
GILGER: OK. So you were the kind of reporter who digs into spending and dark money in politics, looks at who's spending and what on what campaigns, how did this law work for you?
SCHUTSKY: Well, not, well, the show had Mary Jo Pitzl from the Republic on a few months ago to talk about how some of the information that was supposed to be up wasn't even there. Now, we're seeing a lot of reports filed, but it's filed on a site that I find most comparable to like the local government races I used to cover in cities, which is to say it's a list of PDFs that you just kind of have to click on and go through each one individually.
It's not sortable, it's not searchable. I mean, the PDFs are searchable but it's not, you can't sort by different organizations and see how much they spent over time. You have to click on each individual report. So, needless to say, it's just really difficult to get through, to find any useful information at all if it's even there.
GILGER: OK. So if it's there and then when you look at those PDFs, what do they say? Like who's disclosing what?
SCHUTSKY: So a lot of these are actually PACs that are filing these, which are actually required to do disclosures anyway before the dark money law. But some of them are getting money from these 501C4 nonprofit dark money groups. And as the law is written, what it's supposed to do is basically these dark money groups are supposed to disclose any donor who gave $5,000 or more for these large campaigns as long as the overall campaign had spent over $50,000.
But what we're seeing at least, and I haven't gotten through every one of these PDFs, but I've tried to look at the big ones, is we're not really getting that level of drilling down to that level of clarity. There's a PAC called Chispa, which was started by the League of Conservation Voters, which Chispa, as a PAC, has to disclose all this money anyway.
But the League of Conservation Voters is a dark money group and they disclosed that they got, you know, around $3.5 million from League of Conservation voters, but it doesn't go beyond that. They're just saying it came directly from this group. We're not getting that further detail on like who gave the money to the League of Conservation Voters that then passed through to this pack.
GILGER: So while this may be well intentioned, it sounds like in the big picture, at least just the way these disclosures are posted and the layers and layers and layers of donors gets a little bit convoluted.
SCHUTSKY: Yeah. And so when you don't have that searchable sort database, it becomes difficult to drill down and find out which organizations are doing this, how they're intended, which ones aren't if the, if they aren't, what's their reasoning for it? Is it a defensible reason? So all of those are questions we're still trying to ask, trying to find the answer to right now.
GILGER: Yeah. What did dark money look like in this year's election, Wayne, like especially in some of these local races that you follow really closely? Like, were there races where dark money could have made a big impact.
SCHUTSKY: Yeah, I mean, so there wasn't as much dark money honestly as I, as I expected in the traditional sense that we think kind of funneled through these C4 groups, as I mentioned, league of conservation voters via Chispa spent quite a bit of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars on Democrats running for the Corporation Commission that did not work out well for them. They didn't win a single seat of the three that were up.
Also Americans for Prosperity, one of the very famous Koch network dark money groups, spent tens of thousands of dollars on GOP candidates at the Legislature that worked out better for them. They did win a lot of those races. But again, Americans for Prosperity didn't actually file anything in the dark money portal.
And I noticed that in the traditional portal, when they're doing their expenses, everything, all the races they spent on, they say that this was paid for with investment income. And I'm thinking that's a way to circumvent it because they're saying this didn't come from donors, this came from our own investments that we're paying. So it's Americans for Prosperity, this big, you know, kind of faceless group.
GILGER: Interesting. So even though money is sort of through the roof in politics today, there's more money being spent on even these local races than we've almost ever seen before. It's almost, it seems like it's reached a tipping point in which it's so much money, it doesn't even matter all the time.
SCHUTSKY: Yeah. And, yeah. So, like I mentioned, like, in the Corporation Commission race, we saw, you know, so much money spent on the Democratic side and they didn't end up winning a single seat. So,, there's, like you said, there's just so much money involved in this, some coming from individuals, some coming from these dark money groups and a lot coming from just corporations that I think both sides have so much money to spend that almost you're washing each other out.
GILGER: Given the amount of money in politics today, this is like post Citizens United, right, which changed everything in this realm. Do you think it's almost impossible to make this kind of dark money and whatever dark money might mean to folks transparent to voters? Like the idea here is that voters will understand who's trying to sway their votes in these elections.
SCHUTSKY: I don't, I don't think it's, I don't necessarily say impossible. It might be impossible to drill down to the level of detail that maybe this, that the act intended. But I mean, we are still seeing like a lot of organizations disclosed where this money is coming from and not just these faceless dark money groups.
You know, I, for instance, I looked at the House Victory PAC, which was fighting for Republicans running for the House of Representatives, and they did have, you know, disclosed that a lot of businesses like Chevron, Sports Betting Industry Association, Dairy Industry Association were giving money to them, which again because they're a PAC was required before this went into effect. So you might not know the exact name of the individual, but you can still see the organizations, the type of people that are giving to these causes.
GILGER: Wayne what could make this anti dark money law that voters passed here and that voters clearly wanted here more useful and not just to journalists like you but to the public itself, right to that purpose.
SCHUTSKY: Well, I think, and this goes for the general kind of campaign contribution site as well, just making it more user friendly. I mean, the campaign contribution site we have is is better than the dark money site in that you can search individual groups, see how much they spent over time, sort expenses and who's given them the money and all that stuff. But it's still a little bit wonky, a little bit outdated. And then as I mentioned, the dark money site is, is light years behind that. So I think, but that all takes money.
The Secretary of State's Office has said as much like if you want these sites improved, we need the money to do it. They've got a little bit of money from clean elections to start that. But there's just not the money there yet to kind of bring these sites into the, you know, into the 2020s, even the 2010s tens at this point.
