Law setting funding limits in elections could be gutted

By Jim Walls

For the AJC

Members of the State Ethics Commission are on the brink of gutting a key provision of Georgia’s campaign finance law.

Their decision would allow politicians to funnel unlimited amounts of cash to other campaigns despite a law designed to limit contributions.

And since most political money flows to the party in power, Republicans would be the winners.

The issue surfaced, oddly enough, in the case of a $10,000 contribution on behalf of a dead candidate.

Warner Robins Mayor Donald Walker was running for re-election last September and worried about tax problems, when he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

A few months later, Walker’s campaign gave $10,000 to a candidate vying to succeed him. Donations in municipal races are limited to $2,400.

Last week, the ethics commission threw out a complaint about the donation, holding that a state law allowing candidates to contribute “without limitation” to political parties also appears to apply to gifts to other campaigns.

The commission’s staff will prepare an advisory opinion on the issue after further study.

The logical consequence of the commission’s decision, critics say, is that politicians could transfer huge amounts of unused cash to a single candidate.

Gov. Sonny Perdue, for example, cannot legally seek a third term this year. But, with money left over from his 2006 race, he could have written a $787,000 check to his former chief of staff, Karen Handel.

Handel lost the Republican nomination for governor by a nose. But the commission’s stance could still influence the 2010 election, said Rick Thompson, the commission’s former executive secretary and now a private consultant on financial disclosure

Supporters could give the maximum to Roy Barnes or Nathan Deal, then contribute more to another candidate who could redirect it — “without limitation” — to anyone they wished.

“If they can transfer all their money into the gubernatorial race,” Thompson said, “you could literally see a $10 to $20 million race go to $100 million.”

While $100 million seems unlikely, it’s hard to argue with Thompson’s larger point. “This could be a complete game-changer,” he said.

Ethics Commission members expressed hope the Georgia Legislature will plug the loophole.

House Speaker David Ralston, though, has demonstrated a preference for disclosure over regulation. Earlier this year, a bill to cap inter-campaign transfers attracted 40 co-sponsors from both parties. It never even got a hearing.

Ralston told me he did not regard campaign finance as part of the ethics mess that he was trying to clean up. The speaker wanted to restore public trust after his predecessor, Glenn Richardson, resigned over an alleged affair with a female lobbyist.

The former speaker’s walk on the wild side was not directly related to campaign finance. But one reason Richardson held on to power was the vast amount of political money under his control.

Richardson, despite drawing no opposition for re-election, has raised $2.3 million for his campaign and a separate political fund since 2004. Of that, $684,000 was passed on to other Republican candidates or organizations.

Last week, member Bill Jordan suggested the ethics commission’s hands are tied because the law does not limit campaign-to-campaign transfers.

“I think that should be the law, but that’s not what it says and we can’t make it up,” Jordan said.

They don’t have to make it up. The same law provides that “political committees” (which would seem to include campaign committees) may not donate more than the limit that applies to everyone else, and no campaign may accept a larger contribution.

So far, the commission has made no reference to that language.

Common Cause Georgia, the good-government advocacy group, is urging the commission to use common sense to interpret the campaign finance law.

“If the decision the Commission is considering prevails, it would open the door for one source giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to another candidate,” said Common Cause director Bill Bozarth.

“Does anyone believe that’s what was intended?”

Jim Walls, retired investigations editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, runs the watchdog news website atlantaunfiltered.com .