PD Editorial: Dark money prevails in Sacramento

Four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ignited a fiery debate about money’s influence over elections and, ultimately, government.

With its decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, a sharply divided court freed labor unions and corporations to spend as much as they chose on political campaigns. The same rules already applied to wealthy individuals.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, asserted that disclosure laws would ensure that voters knew who was bankrolling the biennial blizzard of attack ads and bilious mailers that pass for campaigns in the United States.

Kennedy was wrong.

Perhaps he underestimated the ingenuity of political professionals. Rather than giving to candidates or political action committees that must comply with disclosure rules, donors have increasingly turned to nonprofit social welfare foundations. These organizations aren’t required to name their benefactors, and the pros have turned them into the stealth bombers of American politics.

Kennedy seemingly overestimated Congress, where Republicans abandoned their past support for transparency in politics and blocked proposals to require full disclosure by organizations such as Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS or the pro-Obama Priorities USA that run their own campaigns for and against candidates.

This phenomena has an apt name: dark money.

Illustrating its growing role in American elections, organizations that rely on dark money are on track to spend more in this off-year election than they did in the 2012 presidential election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

California’s campaign finance laws have generally been more permissive than federal laws. Corporations and unions always were free to donate money, and, until 2000, candidates for state office could accept contributions of any size as long as the donor was identified.

However, in California, as is true across the country, dark money is playing a larger and larger role in campaigns. A bill introduced during the recently completed legislative session would have extended disclosure requirements to social welfare organizations that try to influence voters in state elections.

The result in Sacramento was the same as the result in Washington: The bill failed.

But it wasn’t Republicans who killed SB 52, by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. Democrats, after all, command huge majorities in Sacramento. But many of Leno’s fellow Democrats took a walk on the bill at the request of the Service Employees International Union, the California Teachers Association and other labor interests.

Leno’s bill, called the California Disclose Act, would have required that ads for and against ballot measures identify the primary funders - the three largest donors in TV and print ads, the two largest in radio ads and robocalls. Under present law, the ads only need to include the campaign committee’s name, which seldom shed much light on whose views are being presented.

More than 75,000 people signed petitions in support of SB 52, and the bill cleared the state Senate in May. It also passed through two Assembly committees and was awaiting a floor vote when the Assembly adjourned for the year without bringing it up - another failure of transparency, another victory for dark money.