This past weekend voters in Massachusetts were exposed to the first negative TV attack ad of the still young 2014 state election season. The ad was paid for by the state independent expenditure PAC (i.e. Super PAC) of the National Association of Government Employees, a national union affiliated with SEIU.
We know this because of a Massachusetts “stand by your ad” law that requires political groups to clearly identify themselves in television advertisements. And we will soon know the cost of the ad and the vendors paid to produce it because of other campaign finance disclosure rules.
But what we won’t know for quite some time is who contributed the money to pay for the ad in the first place. Current disclosure laws only require Super PACs to disclose donors eight days before the primary election and once more eight days before the general election. That means voters will remain largely in the dark as to who is funding NAGE and the more than two dozen other Super PACs currently registered with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) until just before the election.
Admittedly, this is less of an issue with union backed Super PACs like NAGE that have a clear public history and are usually funded by union member dues. That being said, voters deserve to know the names of contributors and the size of contributions.
Full disclosure is all the more important when the group has an innocuous name and no public history, but springs up out of thin air to support a specific candidate in a specific race and then dissolves just as quickly as it was formed. This problem of transparency was poignantly exposed by the One Boston Super PAC which dropped a $500,000 ad buy in the week before the 2013 Boston mayoral election. On Election Day, the public and mayoral candidates had no idea which interests were supporting One Boston. More than a month after all the votes had been tallied did media reports finally reveal that One Boston was a subsidiary of the American Federation of Teachers. Current campaign finance filings still list the sole donor of One Boston as One New Jersey.
A similar saga could play out in the high stakes Massachusetts governor’s race. To date, Super PACs with names as vague as Massachusetts Forward Together, Commonwealth Future, and Mass Independent are gearing up to influence our election. Which individuals and special interests are funding these groups? Voters won’t know until the first week of September.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The legislature could act today to require real time disclosure of Super PAC donors and expenditures and close other loopholes in the law (for example, if a group doesn’t organize as a Super PAC, it may be able to bypass donor disclosure altogether, and corporations are not required to disclose independent expenditures). A widely popular bill to do just that is pending in the Elections Laws Committee now. The bill would also require disclosure of a Super PACs top five contributors in paid advertisements. In 2012, the Massachusetts Senate unanimously passed a similar disclosure bill.
But time is quickly running out to enact this important reform before political ads start flooding the airwaves. If you haven’t done so already, tell your state legislators to take immediate action to ensure transparency in our elections.
(Cross-posted at www.commonblog.com)
The shot of him dancing is killer.
Re this:
Are you serious? We’re going to wonder who funds a union?
Re this:
A union identified by name is sufficient disclosure.
And what about non-union backed Super PACs? Who is Massachusetts Forward Together, Commonwealth Future, and Mass Independent to name a few? How much are they raising? Who are their donors? We won’t know until September but we could easily change that with real-time disclosure legislation that unanimously passed the Senate in 2012.
And what about union backed Super PACs that don’t use their own name? Remember One Boston that discloses its only donor as One New Jersey which only through media reports has been revealed to be the AFT. Proposed disclosure legislation would require disclosure of the money at its source, not just the intermediary.
And what about corporations that make direct independent expenditures, rather than contributing to Super PACs? Current law does not require corporations to disclose independent expenditures, an odd loophole created post-Citizens United. Proposed disclosure legislation would also solve this problem.
It’s an unpleasant surprise to see a seemingly hostile position in this forum to basic campaign finance disclosure…
Unions are organized by profession, generally. If Painter PAC contributes, I don’t need the names of the individual painters.
I agree with you generally about disclosure, but I’m less concerned about IBEW PAC than I am with a vaguely named one like Progress America. (Which is to say, I’m not concerned at all about IBEW PAC.)
I think it’s a great ad, I think it presents factual information in a way that the mainstream media will not, and its entertaining to boot. I love the music.
Condemning this ad is likely to hurt rather than help reform efforts.
In fact the better the ad, arguably, the worse the damage.
It’s whether in the absence of a super PAC would any of the candidates run this same ad? That’s all that would happen if a People’s Pledge were signed. If Coakley ran this ad and so then owned it, what would be so bad about that?
I think we were all rather taken by the People’s Pledge during the Brown-Warren campaign, and would like to see it return this campaign season. However, that pledge occurred during a two person contest. What we currently have are 4.25 Democrats and 1.25 Republicans competing. Getting that amorphous group to agree is, well, not going to be as easy.
Possibly one can get the Democrats to agree to a People’s Pledge among each other, but maybe that’s not such a great idea if reactionary plutocrats buy the airwaves for Charlie.
As a dues-paying member of NAGE, I think I probably paid for that ad. I’m not a fan of Charlie Baker but I thought the ad was lame. Good points made in a very amateurish way. You can make good political ads; I don’t agree that this is one of them. I wish NAGE would provide as many details to its members about ongoing contract negotiations with the state as it does about Baker’s time at HP. I guess the union is too busy with other things to do that for the people who pay their salaries.