NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday October 14, 2008
Arizona GOP accused of breaking campaign finance laws for deceptive campaigns
The Arizona Republican Party may have violated multiple campaign finance laws by funneling illegal contributions into one of the most deceptive campaigns in Arizona, according to a legal complaint the Arizona Democratic Party filed today with the Secretary of State’s Office.
“The state Republican Party under Randy Pullen’s leadership appears to be undertaking a massive fraud on behalf of their candidates,” said Maria Weeg, executive director of the Arizona Democratic Party. “These allegations demand a thorough investigation, given the appearance of a widespread operation of illegally raising money from an illicit shadow organization and illegally using it to pay for vile, deceptive campaigns.”
Democrats are asking that the GOP return the contributions and be fined three times the amount of money it received from the shadow group SCA.
The Republican Party’s own description of the funding arrangement for the negative ad campaign suggests Republicans may have broken eight or more laws in conducting a shell game to funnel contributions and disguise donors.
•The Republican Party accepted contributions of more than $100,000 from an organization known only as SCA. According to the complaint, “it appears that SCA’s name may have been used to hide the identity of the individual donors.” None of the donors are named, making SCA effectively an entity that contributes in the name of another person, a class 6 felony violation of Arizona law for “any person who knowingly accepts a contribution made by one person in the name of another person.”
•SCA has not registered as a political committee, a violation of several Arizona statutes listed in the complaint. Further, SCA calls itself an “unincorporated association of individuals.” There is no such organizational designation in Arizona campaign finance law.
• According to media reports, senior Party officials told contributors from SCA that their money would be “set aside” for specific races, which would constitute illegal earmarking. Arizona law mandates that “an individual or political committee shall not give and a political party or other political committee shall not accept an earmarked contribution.”
A copy of the complaint (http://www.azdem.org/page/-/MPDF.pdf), with detailed information about the eight statutes that the Republicans violated is available here. Also available are the exhibits (http://www.azdem.org/page/-/Exhibits.PDF) accompanying the complaint.
The Republicans are funding a campaign so vile and untrue that Valley TV stations won’t run their ads. The Republicans’ own chairman admitted that one of the ads had to be pulled because it was untrue. (http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2008/10/11/20081011nastyads1011.html#comments)
“With voters crying out for real solutions to our ailing economy, our health care crisis and our energy crunch, Republicans are offering this desperate garbage,” Weeg said. “They know their corrupt politics is about to be rejected in favor of real change.