Ted Cruz, who presided over a Senate Judiciary committee hearing on the Internal Revenue Service and politically active nonprofits on Wednesday, addressed the conference by video.īy the group’s own estimate, about one in four state lawmakers nationwide is a member of ALEC, which prepares drafts of pro-business, anti-regulation bills and tries to get them introduced in state legislatures. Some conservatives maintain that disclosing the identity of donors to nonprofits can lead to unnecessary harassment and would discourage the public from exercising their First Amendment right to free speech.Īlso on POLITICO The Kochs freeze out TrumpĪLEC, a well-funded nonprofit, attracted to its conference two presidential hopefuls: Gov. And a recent New York Times/CBS poll found that three-quarters of self-identified Republicans support requiring more disclosure by outside spending organizations.īut participants at the ALEC conference, including many state legislators, talked about the need to counter arguments about transparency in political fundraising by referencing the “chilling effect” disclosure can have on giving. Other speakers also acknowledged that disclosure advocates have waged a more successful public relations campaign in influencing voters’ opinion on the issue, and that it’s time for their side to step it up as more statehouses propose disclosure laws.Īt least 125 campaign finance reform bills - many of them dealing specifically with disclosure - had been introduced in 33 statehouses in the first half of the year, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Somebody needs to come up with a better label than ‘dark money.’” “If the media were to call it something better such as ‘anonymous free speech money’ or something else. “Seems to me that by using the term ‘dark money’ in this discussion we are buying into their arguments,” said one state senator at the session. In an audio tape obtained by POLITICO, panelists at the San Diego event lament a movement gaining traction in state and local governments to require more disclosure of donations to politically active nonprofits, which are expected to spend hundreds of millions in the 2016 election.Īccording to the audio, speakers stressed that groups pushing for disclosure were strategic in labeling anonymous spending “dark money,” “conjuring images of shady operatives in smoke-filled rooms” in the minds of voters to boost their cause. The American Legislative Exchange Council, composed of conservative state lawmakers and corporations, devoted part of its annual conference last week to turning around negative perceptions about anonymous contributions.
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