David Saleh Rauf
At issue: an attempt to clarify what type of communications by an outside group is regulated as a political expenditure. It’s taken on new scope in recent years as special interest groups spend money on ads that often blur between issue-based advocacy and aggressive attack-based politicking…
Five campaign finance experts who analyzed the direct mail pieces came to differencing conclusions, but agreed the ads walk a fine line between genuine spots educating voters on issues and potentially violating the state’s attempt to regulate third-party campaign communications by failing to disclose the activity…
“These can definitely be read to be advocating for a candidate to be defeated. There’s no other reason for this,” Noble said. “It’s so easy to avoid using magic words that if these are allowed to slip through then the law pretty much becomes meaningless.”
David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, a nonprofit based in Washington, disagreed. He said each of the mailers is “hard hitting” but qualify as issue ads because they take a position on matters of public importance.
“They all have advocacy in there. One way of pushing the candidates really hard is to take a big whack at them,” he said. “There are other reasonable interpretations of what they’re trying to accomplish here.”
