Sunshine: 3, Fat cats: 0 in dark money fight

A judge has ruled we have a right to know who is secretly spending big money to try to buy our elections in Arizona.

Again, that is.

For the THIRD time, the courts have declared that your right to know who is trying to influence your vote trumps the fat cats’ to hide as they secretly spend big bucks to tell you how you should vote.

U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver on Thursday dismissed a complaint by Americans for Prosperity, a national “dark money” group that claims its donors’ First Amendment right to free speech would be violated if they have to own up to their words.

Silver declared the law constitutional, noting “a strong governmental interest in informing voters about who funds political advertisements.”

“Identifying funders enable the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages,” she wrote. For those keeping score:

That’s Sunshine: 3; Fat cats and the politicians who do their bidding: 0.

Actually, make that Sunshine, 4, when you add in the overwhelming public vote.

For more than a decade, this state’s leaders stood by as “dark money” ran like a river through Arizona. In fact, Then-Gov. Doug Ducey and the Legislature passed laws to open the floodgates even wider.

The only way Arizonans were ever going to see who’s pulling the political levers was if they demanded disclosure. And in 2022, they did.

Under the Voters’ Right to Know Act, any nonprofit or political party spending $50,000 or more on any combination of statewide races must now disclose all donors who contribute $5,000 or more, regardless of whether the money was passed through intermediary groups.

For local races, the threshold

$25,000.

A staggering 73% of voters approved the initiative.

It passed in early balloting and with Election Day voters. It passed in every county.

It seems the only people who want to keep us in the dark about who is funding campaigns are Republican legislative leaders and the “dark money” groups that spend millions telling us how to vote — without, of course, telling us who they really are.

Groups like Center for Arizona Policy and Arizona Free Enterprise Club, which filed suit in December 2022 claiming the voter-enacted law violated their donors’ First Amendment right to free speech. The Free Enterprise Club is the “dark money” group that in 2014 fronted for Arizona Public Service as it poured millions into a campaign to stack the Arizona Corporation Commission with friendly faces — a maneuver that bought APS a nice rate increase in 2017.

People like Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Ben Toma, who filed suit in August, claiming the Legislature “will suffer ongoing, irreparable injury and loss of its constitutional rights” should the voter-enacted law go into effect.

Groups like Americans for Prosperity, which sued in March 2023 in federal court. Americans for Prosperity has funneled money into a web of other dark money operations that in turn have worked to kill earlier voter initiatives, including one to change the way we elect our leaders in this state.

Voters prevailed in all three court cases, but the most important win came Thursday when a federal judge ruled the law is constitutional. Just don’t look for that to be the end of it.

These groups believe they have a First Amendment right to spend whatever it takes to get their candidates elected without anybody knowing who’s behind it or what they have to gain.

Never mind that we are now at three judges who have said otherwise.

There is money to be made, after all, and influence to be wielded when you can walk invisibly through the hallways of power.