Civil Rights Groups Allege Funny Financing by Connerly
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 7/23/2003
Did Ward Connerly illegally launder money? That's what civil rights groups?including Common Cause, Californians for Justice, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights?have alleged. At issue is funding for the "Racial Privacy Intiative Committee," an organization that is pushing for a statewide ballot initiative that would prevent California from collecting data on race, ethnicity and national origin.In a complaint sent to the Enforcement Division of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, these organizations contend that the Committee, which is sponsored by Connerly's American Civil Rights Coalition (ACRC), violated state campaign finance law. The law in question, the Political Reform Act of 1974, requires that political action committees disclose the source of all contributions over $5,000.
The Committee has disclosed that over $1.5 million?90% of the Initiative's total donations?has come from the ACRC, without revealing the names of the donors who initially contributed to the ACRC. While the ACRC is a 501(c)4 foundation that is allowed to contribute to political causes without revealing the names of donors, critics insist that this loophole does not exempt the Committee from disclosure regulations.
James Harrison, a lawyer representing the complainants, argues that contributors to the ACRC cannot remain anonymous if they "either know or have reason to know that their funds are going to be used for a political campaign." While the ACRC claimed it had little money as of its 2002 tax filing, it still managed to donate over $1.5 million to the Committee, prompting some to believe that the ACRC solicited money for the express purpose of funding the Committee's ballot-initiative campaign. Meanwhile, pitches for the campaign had been prominently placed on the ACRC's website (though have been subsequently taken down). These solicitations asked that contributors donate directly to the Committee, not ACRC.
Opponents of the ACRC and the Committee had sent an earlier letter to the ACRC asking that they reveal the donors of the $1.5 million. Kevin Nguyen, the executive director of the ACRC refused, saying, "We don't want to set a precedent, either for ourselves or some other nonprofit engaged in the political process."
It remains to be seen what the outcome of the complaint will be. The ballot initiative, however, is slated for a contentious battle culminating in the March 2004 statewide election.
Information from the Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, and The Sacramento Bee was used in this article.
