Election spending is Horne’s next fight
Ex-AG, schools chief takes on ‘dark money’
Tom Horne, the former attorney general and superintendent of public instruction, spent the better part of the past decade dogged by accusations of campaign shenanigans.
Now, he has lent his name to an initiative that would add more transparency to campaign donations.
Horne said he does not see dissonance between his call for election reform and the years he has spent under a cloud of investigation.
Both cases are behind him. In one case, a prosecutor said there was not enough evidence that he did anything wrong. Horne said he has always been for disclosure of contributions, the main aim of the Outlaw Dirty Money group he has joined.
He said he was attacked by a socalled “dark money” group in his last campaign to keep his job as attorney general. He said that attack in the primary cost him the election, making the banning of those groups a personal
crusade as well.
Horne was one of four people listed as authors of a column that ran in The
Republic this month in support of the proposed voter initiative that would mandate disclosure of political contributions.
It was a bipartisan group that included Rep. Noel Campbell, a Republican; former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson, an independent; and Terry Goddard, a Democratic former attorney general and Phoenix mayor.
The campaign, Outlaw Dirty Money, led by Goddard, would effectively stop so-called dark-money groups, which spend money on political campaigns but don’t disclose donors.
Goddard attempted to get a similar measure on the ballot in 2016. After that failed, Goddard said, he saw Horne at a Christmas party.
“You should have called me,” Goddard recalled Horne saying. “That’s something I really care about.”
As Goddard prepared this year’s initiative, he said, Horne reached out to him again. Horne was present at the Secretary of State’s Office when the organization filed its paperwork, Goddard said.
“We were happy to have him aboard,” Goddard said.
He said he couldn’t speak to the specific allegations Horne faced. “Ideally, you want to have somebody that is without any questions,” he said.
But, he said, it showed this issue cuts across many party and ideological lines.
“I think one of the beauties of dark money is that it is a stand-alone issue,” he said. “I do think this is something that people can agree on that have differing opinions about other aspects of election reform.”
Some of Horne’s troubles stemmed from another type of political group: an independent campaign committee. By statute, a candidate can’t be in contact with such a committee. Horne was accused of having contacts with a group supporting him in 2010.
The case against him dragged on until 2017. A county prosecutor ruled in July that there was not enough evidence to bring charges, effectively clearing Horne.
“I was accused, but I was falsely accused,” Horne said during an interview in his office this month.
Horne said the independent committee that supported him, like all other such committees, is required to disclose donors, something he’s always supported.
“I’ve always been opposed to political statements that are not identified as to where they came from,” Horne said. “Even before I became a target of dark money.”
In 2014, a dark-money group ran an anti-Horne campaign. Its ads and mailers included details about an FBI report that agents tailing Horne saw him hit a vehicle in a parking garage and then drive away without leaving a note because he was trying to conceal an affair with a female employee.
Horne said that campaign cost him in the Republican primary against the eventual winner of the office, Mark Brnovich.
“There’s no question that’s what defeated me,” he said.
Horne filed a complaint about the group, the Arizona Public Integrity Alliance, which he said had an “Orwellian name.” Because the group was registered as a charity, it did not have to disclose its donors. But Horne said the group should have done some charity work, not just be organized to funnel money to political causes. “Nobody’s enforcing that law,” he said.
The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office looked at Horne’s complaint but denied that the group acted as a political operative.
In a recent interview, Tyler Montague, president of the Arizona Public Integrity Alliance, said he sees the group not as a political organization, but as a watchdog against corrupt politicians. Anonymous donations, he said, are key to that work.
He also said political donors are often afraid to donate money to campaigns against powerful politicians, as Horne was as attorney general.
Montague worked on the 2011 campaign to recall then-state Senate President Russell Pearce. He said some political figures would tell him they hoped the recall succeeded. He would then see they donated to Pearce’s campaign, fearing retaliation if they didn’t.
“People in certain offices wield a lot of power and have the ability to reward people that support them and punish those who don’t,” he said.
Montague said anonymous free speech — the term he favors over “dark money” — is needed when attacking such powerful people.
“When it comes to going after the bad guys,” Montague said, “I wouldn’t get a dime if there was required disclosure.”
Besides dark-money groups, Horne said he is also not a fan of independent campaign organizations, like the one that led to a lengthy investigation of his activities.
Such committees “make a mockery out of campaign contribution limitations,” Horne said. He criticized the 1976 court decision that allowed them to proliferate, making such organizations a political reality and a funnel for donors who can give unlimited amounts to support a candidate.
“Either we have contribution limitations or we do not,” he said.
Horne was accused of coordinating with the committee set up to support him in 2010. Emails and phone calls with a person on that committee raised suspicions. Horne maintained the discussions didn’t have anything to do with the election, but instead concerned a real estate deal.
Horne fought what he said was an unfair prosecution, and the case went up to the Arizona Supreme Court. Justices overturned the fines levied against him and sent the case back for review.
Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre was assigned to look at the case and ruled in July there was not enough evidence to charge Horne with electionlaw violations.
Horne and the person on the committee “certainly engaged in communication during a time frame which would cause any outside observer to cry foul,” McIntyre’s decision read. “The record, however, does not establish by a preponderance of the evidence that this communication was illegal.”
McIntyre said the previous investigation of Horne appeared to be “not a search for the truth, but rather, only intended to shore up conclusions already drawn.”
Horne has filed suit against Sheila Polk, the Yavapai County attorney who had pressed the case against him, accusing her of violating his civil rights.
In October, another investigation of Horne wrapped up, one that looked into work done by state employees on Horne’s campaign. A former employee had said the Attorney General’s Office under Horne functioned as a quasicampaign headquarters.
The investigation, conducted by the Gilbert town attorney and a retired appellate judge, found merit in the allegations but said the staff work was hard to place a value on. The report said a previous fine of $10,000 levied by the state’s Clean Elections Commission was sufficient.
The initiative Horne is supporting would give that commission more oversight over political spending.
Mark Kimble, a commissioner on that board, said he supports the initiative against dark-money groups, saying the measure furthers what voters intended when they passed the initiative that created the Clean Elections structure. “Voters want disclosure,” Kimble said. “They want more information about where the money is coming from in elections.”
Kimble said he did not want to comment specifically on the support from Horne, a politician whose activities had been looked at by the commission.
Horne said he was not sure what his involvement in the campaign would be but is open to helping any way he can.
He also didn’t rule out a future run for office, saying only that he was “on vacation from politics.”