Montana Republicans Launch Campaign to Ban Dark Money

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), right, was helped in his 2012 reelection bid by dark money spending.Pete Marovich/ZUMAPRESS.com

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Unlike their counterparts in Congress, state lawmakers around the country are speeding ahead with efforts to reform how campaigns are funded and to address the flow of dark money into elections. Democrats in New York’s legislature want new legislation creating a public financing system for statewide elections. In California, the Democratic-controlled Senate recently passed its own DISCLOSE Act, which would force groups running political ads to name the top three funders of those ads and compel full disclosure of donations masked by pass-throughs or shell companies.

Now comes Montana. On Tuesday, a group of state Republican lawmakers unveiled a new initiative to ban dark money in state political campaigns. The lawmakers and their allies hope to put a dark-money ban initiative on the ballot for the November 2014 elections. A similar piece of legislation, Senate Bill 375, won the backing of Democrats and Republicans in Montana’s Senate last legislative session but later died in the state House.

The Republican backers of the ballot measure effort say they expect plenty of Democratic support. “It may be a Republican group that’s kicking it off, but it is a joint initiative and it will be a bipartisan cause,” state Rep. Roger Hagan (R) told the Great Falls Tribune.

Here’s more from the Tribune:

Buffalo Republican Sen. Jim Peterson, SB 375’s sponsor, said the initiative would require “full transparency” in Montana state elections.

Peterson said anonymous spending by third-party 501(c)(4) nonprofit political groups has corrupted the political process by allowing undisclosed, outside spending in local races.

“Dark money has brought great divisiveness to the election process,” Peterson said. “Locals have no idea who is influencing their politicians and their government officials, so today we’re going to put the power back into the democratic process and let the people answer this question for us.”

The measure is still in the works, and draft ballot language of the proposed measure should be available within 30 days, Peterson said.

For a proposed initiative to qualify for the ballot, it needs to be submitted to the Legislative Services Division. Then, it must pass a legal review by the Montana Attorney General’s Office. If the ballot language is approved, the sponsor must collect signatures from 5 percent of the total number of qualified voters in Montana, including 5 percent of the voters in each of 34 legislative House districts.

Montanans saw a flood of anonymous political spending in 2012, due to the combination of cheap ad rates and a fiercely fought US Senate race pitting incumbent Jon Tester against Republican Denny Rehberg. As ProPublica reported, total spending in the Tester-Rehberg race reached $51 million, twice as much as was spent in Tester’s 2006 race. Of that, roughly $12 million was dark money.

Money from undisclosed sources played an pivotal role in Tester’s victory. It helped libertarian candidate Dan Cox grab more votes than any libertarian candidate statewide in a competitive race—votes Rehberg needed to unseat Tester. In the end, Tester won by nearly 4 percentage points.

More Mother Jones reporting on Dark Money

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate