Joseph Spector
In response to the growing influence of the firms, JCOPE in January required the consultants to register as lobbyists and follow state disclosure rules if they reach out to a media outlet “in an attempt to get it to advance the client’s message in an editorial.”
David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, called JCOPE’s regulation “absurd, flagrantly unconstitutional, and a new low for one of the worst places in the country to express one’s opinion about government.”