Political group accused again of violating election laws
• Boxes of documents turn up in Colorado meth house
• Office of Commissioner of Political Practices broken into
• State judge says he’ll sanction American Tradition Partnership
For the second time in two years, the office of the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices allegedly has found itself in possession of documents linking a “social welfare nonprofit” organization with coordinated efforts to help Montana candidates win election. And this time the story was told on television.
The “social welfare nonprofit” organization, American Tradition Partnership, formerly known as Western Tradition Partnership, has been quite successful in its effort to de-regulate Montana’s campaign finance regulations.
Founded in May 2009 by former Republican U.S. Representative for Montana Ron Marlenee and former Montana legislator John Sinrud, ATP claims to be a “grassroots organization” that promotes responsible natural resource development, private property rights and multiple use of public lands. Sinrud eventually left ATP and moved to the Flathead Valley, where he became the government affairs director for the Northwest Montana Association of Realtors in 2009. He left the NMAR position in March 2012.
ATP’s big victory came on Oct. 18, 2010, when Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Jeffrey Sherlock agreed with ATP that, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling earlier that year, Montana’s 1912 Corrupt Practices Act was unconstitutional.
Like the Citizens United ruling, Sherlock’s ruling opened up Montana elections to unlimited contributions by corporations so long as the money did not go directly to candidates or was coordinated with candidates’ campaigns.
The Montana Supreme Court’s ruling on Dec. 30, 2011, overturning Sherlock would have allowed the century-old law passed by citizens initiative to remain in effect. The high court’s ruling, however, was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 25 this year.
ATP, led by Indiana attorney James Bopp, who also worked on the Citizens United case, continued to see success in fighting Montana election regulations, most recently with U.S. District Court Judge Charles Lovell’s Oct. 3 ruling that Montana laws limiting campaign contributions are unconstitutional.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Lovell’s ruling through the 2012 general election. Meanwhile ATP is continuing to fight Montana and the Commissioner of Political Practices over other election regulations — including requirements to disclose the sources of funding for political advertising. But the first blow came from the state.
The 2008 and 2010 elections
Three days after Sherlock’s ruling, then Commissioner of Political Practices Dennis Unsworth issued a 43-page statement charging ATP and the Coalition For Energy and Environment with violating the state’s campaign finance laws on numerous occasions.
Unsworth’s allegations followed a two-year investigation into ATP’s activities in 19 Montana legislative races in 2008, including the House District 3 race in which Mick Holm, D-Columbia Falls, lost to Dee Brown, R-Coram, and the House District 8 race in which Cheryl Steenson, D-Kalispell, defeated Craig Witte, R-Kalispell.
Important information in that investigation came from former Lewis and Clark County Commissioner Karolin Loendorf, who started working with ATP on Jan. 7, 2009. She told Unsworth that she understood her job was to get individuals elected to public office. She said she resigned on Feb. 15, 2009, because of the “underhanded things” she claimed were going on at ATP.
Among the documents Unsworth uncovered was a PowerPoint presentation called “WTP 2010 Election Year Program Executive Briefing” that Unsworth said “appears to be targeted to Montana donors.” The program called for spending $77,000 on primary races, $460,000 in the general election, and $8.2 million on 15 U.S. Senate races and 30 U.S. House races.
Potential donors were encouraged by PowerPoint slogans like “Corporate contributions allowed,” “No contributions limit” and “It’s confidential.” Notes stated “There’s no limit to how much you can give,” “Finally, we’re not required to report the name or the amount of any contribution we receive,” and “You can just sit back on election night and see what a difference you’ve made.”
Unsworth claimed that ATP tried to hide some expenditures by attributing them to the Coalition For Energy and Environment, but he doubted the front group had the financial means to create and mail out “thousands of slick, oversize, full-color, glossy, professionally designed and printed campaign flyers.”
All of this activity took place before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United case, and by coordinating donors with plans to target candidates, and by offering to hide the names of donors, ATP had run afoul of Montana election law.
ATP continued its work in the 2010 election. Locally, it mailed a 6-by-10-inch glossy flyer accusing Whitefish Democrat Will Hammerquist of making “plans to raid school funds” and trying to “create Montana’s own version of Obama’s failed ‘stimulus’.” Hammerquist eventually lost the 2010 race for House District 4 to Kalispell Republican Derek Skees.
ATP also mailed a newsletter to Whitefish area residents signed by the group’s executive director Donald Ferguson claiming Hammerquist “flatly refused” to “repudiate his past support for radical greens.” On the other hand, Ferguson said, “Republican Derek Skees has pledged 100 percent support for high-paying jobs and affordable energy for Montana.”
On Nov. 24, 2010, ATP and Montana Citizens For Right To Work filed a 58-page complaint against Unsworth, Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock and two county attorneys claiming Montana’s election statutes were unconstitutional because they were “impermissibly vague and overbroad” and infringed on free speech rights.
The plaintiffs cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case that “independent expenditures and the corporate form pose no threat to the electoral process.” They went on to argue that Unsworth’s labeling of ATP as a “political committee” placed an “onerous burden” on people who wanted to advocate a political opinion.
The Colorado connection
The office of the Commissioner of Political Practices’ case against ATP for its activities in the 2008 and 2010 elections at one point appeared to be heading for settlement. Investigators said they had abundant evidence that the Coalition For Energy and Environment was a sham front group for ATP, but “sufficient evidence has not been disclosed to establish coordination between WTP/CEE and any candidate.” They concluded that henceforth, “Concern and healthy skepticism is warranted.”
Then, about five months later, the state office received several boxes of documents from Colorado. A convicted felon named Mark Siebel had discovered them in late 2010 in a house near Denver used by methamphetamine users. Siebel said a friend found the boxes in a stolen car, and he alerted several Colorado candidates who had been targeted by ATP. A lawyer married to one of those Colorado candidates shipped the boxes to Montana.
The boxes held files on 23 conservative candidates in Montana and included surveys filled out by the candidates and their wives and mailers said to be paid for by the candidates’ campaigns. Several file folders held pages with multiple copies of candidates’ signatures, including signatures that matched ones found on the mailers. Bank statements found in the boxes came from several outside groups, including the Coalition For Energy and Environment, the Alliance of Montana Taxpayers, and the Conservative Victory Fund.
Some of the documents referred to Christian LeFer, who was described in 2009 memos as ATP’s director of strategic programming. LeFer was also registered with the Montana Secretary of State as the executive director of Montana Citizens For Right To Work. He and his wife Allison LeFer owned Direct Mail and Communications, a Bozeman printing company.
When PBS Frontline and ProPublica investigators asked about the box of documents, ATP’s attorney in Colorado, Jim Brown, suggested they belonged to Direct Mail and Communications. Brown also suggested that PBS Frontline hand over the documents because they were “in possession of stolen property.” By that time, however, the boxes were in the hands of the office of the Commissioner of Political Practices.
LeFer said the documents were in his car when it was stolen in Denver in June 2010. He filed a complaint in state district court as the PBS Frontline show was publicized seeking the return of the documents. He claimed their release would harm his business.
His wife later claimed in an e-mail to the Associated Press that the documents found in Colorado were a mix of documents from her business, Direct Mail and Communications, and her husband’s business as an independent political consultant. She said she alone worked with candidates, and perhaps her husband referred clients to her.
When PBS Frontline investigators asked Julie Steab, an investigator for the Commissioner of Political Practices, about the Colorado documents, she responded, “My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that ATP was running a lot of these campaigns.”
PBS Frontline also asked what former federal election commissioner Trevor Potter thought about the documents. “This is the sort of information that is, in fact, campaign strategy, campaign plans that candidates cannot share with an outside group without making it coordinated,” he said. If he was still an FEC commissioner, “I would say we had grounds to proceed with an investigation.”
Office burglarized
The office of the Commissioner of Political Practices does not have the authority to levy fines or penalties, Unsworth said. After it issues a finding, an attempt is made to settle with the offending party. If a settlement cannot be reached, the office might take the case to state district court.
In the case of ATP, Unsworth said, the organization refused to follow the state’s election regulations, and the office felt compelled to take the case to court. ATP filed a counter-claim in state district court, he said, and a hearing is scheduled in the matter in March 2013.
In a new twist to the case, a Capitol security guard in Helena reported a break-in at the office of the Commissioner of Political Practices on Oct. 31 at about 9:47 p.m. — about 24 hours after the PBS Frontline show was aired. The guard said the door was open and the basement light was on.
Mary Baker, who works in the office, said the Colorado documents had been moved to another site earlier and were secure. No documents in the office appeared to be missing, but office staff were still checking. The current Commissioner of Political Practices, Jim Murry, rejected a request by the AP to see the Colorado documents, citing the state lawsuit against ATP.
On Nov. 1, Judge Sherlock said he intends to sanction ATP for failing to produce organizational records in the two-year-old case relating to the 2008 and 2010 elections. He said he would specify what those sanctions would be after he had reviewed additional written arguments from ATP and the state.
The state claims the records ordered by the judge but still missing included a list of the nonprofit organization’s board members, its bylaws, meeting minutes and some communications.
Bopp, ATP’s attorney, argued that disclosure would violate its constitutional rights to free speech and other rights. He also noted that ATP had not appealed prior orders by the court to provide the records because it didn’t expect to win before the Montana Supreme Court.
The Montana Attorney General’s Office has accused ATP of “willful disobedience” and hiding under the cloak of nonprofit status. Assistant Attorney General Andy Huff said he’d never before seen an attorney tell a judge that his client would not obey that judge’s orders.
On Nov. 2, Sherlock ordered the release of ATP files collected by the state over the past two years. The records are not the same as those reported in the PBS Frontline show. The released records from 2008-2010 include hundreds of pages of account transactions and copies of checks to lawyers, consultants, vendors and a Tea Party organizer in Montana, Colorado and Washington, D.C.
Some of the newly released documents indicate that in October 2008, when the group launched as Western Tradition Partnership, it received $515,000. Several days later, ATP gave $500,000 to the anti-union political group National Right To Work Committee.
Other documents allegedly show that Allison LeFer was intimately involved in ATP’s finances and signed many of their checks. This would seem to contradict her earlier claim that her business, Direct Mail and Communications, was not connected to her husband Christian LeFer’s political consulting work.
ATP responds
American Tradition Partnership executive director Donald Ferguson’s first reaction to learning about PBS Frontline’s upcoming show about the Colorado documents was to say the group had contacted the FBI “regarding the Montana Commission on Political Practices’ admission that they have engaged in the interstate trafficking of stolen property.”
Ferguson followed up the same day by saying, “With days to go until Montanans vote, the activist group ProPublica has decided to release a misleading, sensationalist story built around personal property stolen from a car and delivered by a meth user to ATP’s political opponents.” Ferguson said PBS Frontline’s story “falsely links ATP to individual activities the organization has no connection to.”
“ATP does not, and never will, tell voters which candidate to vote for,” he said. “ATP speaks on the issues, informing voters where candidates stand and of their public records.”
Ferguson said that other than sending a questionnaire to a candidate, “I have never communicated with most of them.” He added that, “I seriously doubt stolen property acquired by a meth user and spread around by political activists are true, accurate, unaltered and complete documents.”
Immediately following the PBS Frontline show’s broadcast on Oct. 30, Ferguson issued another statement in which he questioned how media investigators got access to the Colorado documents. He also wondered why the Commission on Political Practices never acted on documents it held for a year and a half, and he noted that a judge had blocked further release of the documents. Ferguson also commented on the broadcast’s message.
“Aside from wild conspiracy theories and willful misreadings of applicable campaign finance and nonprofit laws, tonight’s Frontline story simply revealed what most Montanans and Americans already knew — that radical anti-growth environmentalists aren’t the only ones who are free to organize, raise money and communicate with the public on important policy topics,” he said.