Caucuses’ spending limits fuzzy

By Jim Walls

For the AJC

Former lobbyist Rusty Kidd, voters were told last year, once paid for strippers to entertain legislators on a jaunt to Daufuskie Island, S.C.: “He used young women as a tool to get what he wanted and make money.”

The quote comes from a campaign mailing by the House Democratic Caucus, which spent $51,000 to back its candidate for a Middle Georgia House seat and to disparage Kidd, an independent who won despite the attack. This summer, similar mailings in two other races cost the party’s legislative caucuses another $60,000 or so.

Those expenditures appear to far exceed the legal limit. Georgia law caps donations to a particular legislative candidate, or an outside expenditure on his or her behalf, at $2,400 per election, with some exceptions for political parties.

Such tactics also have allowed the caucuses to send messages that the parties can’t. The Senate Democratic Caucus in July mailed primary voters a brochure suggesting that Graham Balch, a Democrat challenging incumbent Vincent Fort, was really a Republican.

The Democrats’ bylaws say the party cannot endorse one Democrat over another. The pro-Fort mailings, using the party’s postal permit and return address, appeared to do just that, Balch said.

“If the Democratic Party says I’m a Republican, it’s more effective than if Vincent Fort says that,” he said.

It might seem the caucuses are trying to have it both ways — lining up with the party only when it suits them.

But the party’s lawyer, Michael Jablonski, says that’s not the case.

Party bylaws cover activity by the state committee and its members, but not the caucuses, he said. And, he added, the State Ethics Commission, which enforces and interprets the campaign finance law, decided a few years ago that the caucuses qualify for the same exemptions from spending limits that political parties do.

There’s no way to know just what the commission was thinking, though, because only a cursory record of that meeting can be found.

“That’s one of my big complaints about the commission,” Jablonski said. “They’d rule something in one case ... but since there’s nothing in writing about what their decision was, you couldn’t be certain they would do the same thing the next time.”

The commission has gotten “a little better” on this score recently, Jablonski said. But that doesn’t help in this situation, which involves the use of campaign mailings or advertising that target specific races but name more than one candidate.

Both major parties in Georgia have become prolific in using these so-called “multicandidate” messages. The parties may spend as much as they want on these mailings, because the law exempts them from spending limits when they’re supporting a group of named candidates.

Caucuses in the House and Senate are part of the party, top Democrats say, so the spending limits do not apply to them either.

At first glance, though, campaign finance law appears to treat legislative caucuses differently. The statute defines a caucus as a “political committee.” A few paragraphs later, the law exempts parties, but not political committees, from spending limits for multicandidate efforts.

Jablonski said the commission in 2007 directed the Democrats and their caucuses to report all their spending on the same disclosure forms. That procedure was meant to clear up confusion over transactions involving campaign accounts with different names.

The party controlled all of the bank accounts, so the commission reasoned that the exemption should apply to all of them, Jablonski said.

I tried to check that out, but the commission’s minutes say no violation of the law was found and the complaint was dismissed. Nothing else.

Normally, a recording of the meeting might clarify the issue, but all the 2007 meetings are missing from the agency’s audio and video archive.

There is another way to determine the commission’s interpretation. Candidates, parties, campaign donors and others may request an advisory opinion on such fine points of law.

It turns out newspaper columnists can do that too. So, last Friday, I submitted my request for an advisory opinion. The question: Does the exemption from spending limits for a group of named candidates also apply to legislative caucuses in the Georgia House and Senate?

The commission has 60 days to come up with an answer. We’ll let you know what they decide.