The ugliest races for control of the Colorado General Assembly have been co-opted by so-called citizens groups that are really front agencies for corporations, dark money and national special interests.
Consider the political mailers being sent in Senate District 26, where Republican Nancy Doty and Democrat Daniel Kagan are battling for a vacant seat representing the southeastern Denver metro area of Littleton, Englewood and Cherry Hills Village.
Large fliers show a woman in Littleton named Amanda “furious” that Doty misused taxpayer dollars. Doty made the mistake of filing ordinary expenses for reimbursement as a county commissioner, like commissioners are supposed to do.
Kagan’s personal wealth and business dealings are “skeletons in his closet,” according to one ad. In another his head is superimposed on the body of Rich Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly.
The ads are so laughable that I find it hard to believe they work.
But I also have to give the geniuses behind the efforts the benefit of the doubt: That they wouldn’t spend a combined $3.9 million on peddling half-truths in races across the state if the ads weren’t likely to keep the aforementioned undesirable candidates, and many others, out of office.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for elected officials facing scrutiny at election time, even if it takes millions of dollars to get the message out.
But this is not that.
This is political drivel, designed to misinform, scare or anger voters.
The culprits are independent expenditure committees (IECs) set up by both Republicans and Democrats to do their dirty work. These committees aren’t considered “dark money” — politically active nonprofits that don’t disclose donors — because they do disclose their donors, but “disclose” is a strong term.
IECs can raise and spend an unlimited amount of money and the committees can expressly advocate for or against a candidate right up to an election.
Let’s start with the Republicans.
It took several hours of digging through campaign finance reports filed with the secretary of state and the Federal Election Commission to get a sense of who is funding Colorado Citizens for Accountable Government, the group behind the Kagan ads.
The Accountable Government IEC reports receiving $2.3 million since July from four groups. The single largest donor, the Republican State Leadership Committee, is a national group that discloses its donors to the IRS and has raised $19 million in 2016, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Another $810,000 has come from two Colorado-based 527 committees, which are groups like IECs, except they cannot expressly advocate for or against a candidate. Big corporations and industry groups have contributed to the Senate Majority Fund and the Colorado Leadership Fund. PDC Energy is the single largest donor to both.
Finally, $300,000 has come from the nonprofit Concerned Citizens for Colorado, for which there is no information available about donors or other activities, making it completely dark.
The Democrats’ counterpart is called the Colorado Citizens’ Alliance, and is responsible for the Doty ads. The IEC received $1.7 million from a 527 with the same name since July.
The top donor to the 527 is the NEA Advocacy Fund, a federal independent expenditure committee that gets all of its money from the National Education Association, the teachers union.
The second largest donor is Education Reform Now Advocacy, a national nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors.
For full disclosure, the 527s set up for Democrats and Republicans also have reported hundreds of donations from real Colorado people, businesses and groups.
But at the end of the day the finances of these IECs and 527s are opaque to voters or even to the elected officials who are being targeted.
Attempts to tighten down campaign finance laws are partially to blame for these groups popping up across the nation. Money in politics will always find a way to express itself; as it should, given that money is speech and speech is free in the U.S.
Colorado, meanwhile, has so limited donations to candidates and political parties as to render their campaigns and committees ineffective.
Instead pass-through entities have become the undesirable preferred vehicle for political speech in state races, and there is no one to hold accountable for scurrilous political ads they generate.
Megan Schrader (mschrader@denverpost.com) is a Denver Post editorial writer and columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @MeganSchraderDP
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