Dark money
groups flooded Albuquerque’s airwaves in August, aiming to sway a hotly
contested U.S. Senate race by making more than half the political ad buys on top
TV stations.
That fact, gleaned through a review of TV station
political ad records now available in our Free the Files news application, highlights the role
that unlimited anonymous money is playing in this year’s election.
Our analysis of a month of ad orders in the Senate race
between Republican Heather Wilson and Democrat Rep. Martin Heinrich is possible
because of a new Federal Communications Commission rule requiring major-market affiliates
of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC to upload political ad files to a government website.
In statements to ProPublica,
the campaigns of Heinrich and Wilson blamed each other for relying on dark
money.
Wilson campaign spokesman Chris Sanchez accused “environmental
extremists” of pouring money “into New Mexico to falsely attack Heather Wilson
because they know her opponent, Congressman Heinrich, supports their radical
agenda.”
Heinrich campaign spokeswoman Whitney Potter accused
“corporate special interest groups” of spending millions in
secret money to support Wilson “because they know she will support their
misplaced priorities that put the wealthy special interests ahead of
middle-class families in New Mexico.”
The Senate race has attracted national attention because,
with incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman retiring, it is a rare open seat. The
race was considered tight earlier this year. After a summer of heavy spending by
outside groups on both sides, Heinrich is now the favorite.
In August, while Wilson’s campaign contracted to spend about
$512,000 on ads in Albuquerque, four prominent conservative groups booked
almost $658,000 of ads attacking Heinrich, station records show.
That means about 56 percent of the ad orders on the
Republican side came from groups that don’t disclose their donors, including
Americans for Prosperity, founded by billionaire brothers David and Charles
Koch, and Crossroads GPS, launched by GOP strategist Karl Rove. Campaigns are
required to report their donors.
Heinrich, who as a congressman has called for donor
disclosure and campaign-finance reform, booked an estimated $246,000 worth of
ads in August. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which also reports
its donors, chimed in with another $74,000.
But nonprofits on the Democratic side spent an additional $288,000
on ads criticizing Wilson, about 47 percent of the money spent on ads overall.
The liberal dark money groups included a coalition of environmental
organizations and the Citizens for Strength and Security Fund, which appears to
be a successor to a nonprofit active in the 2010 election.
The spending figures are estimates because most of the
files uploaded to the FCC website are ad orders. Sometimes, ordered ads never
run because of changes in programming. The numbers also are not comprehensive; other TV stations in
the Albuquerque market besides affiliates of the major networks do not have to put
political ad files online until 2014.
While the FCC files have long been public, they were previously
kept on paper at TV stations and were largely inaccessible. The files capture
certain spending not reported to the Federal Election Commission and offer a
detailed look at how campaigns and outside groups are spending ad dollars,
including how many ads have been ordered, which stations are running them, the
programs they run on, and how much they cost.
The ad spending in Albuquerque shows that nonprofit social
welfare groups are playing at least as significant a role this election cycle as
super PACs, which can also accept unlimited donations but must report their
donors. Not a single super PAC reported buying ads in August on the top
stations in the Albuquerque market, the FCC filings show.
Some of the most prominent conservative social welfare nonprofits
signed up to support Wilson, producing ads labeling Heinrich an out-of-control
spender.
“Big Washington spending
is not helping New Mexico. And the more money Martin Heinrich is spending is
part of the problem,” a narrator in a Crossroads GPS ad says. Pointing to Heinrich’s
support for the stimulus, the ad claims he voted to send $2 million to
California to collect ants and $300,000 to Texas to study weather on Venus.
The group ordered about $166,000 in ads in Albuquerque in
August, TV station filings show.
Unlike most candidates Crossroads is helping around the
country, Wilson has a direct connection to the group. After she left Congress
in 2009, she sat on Crossroads’ board for a six-month period
ending in February 2011, according to her financial disclosure form.
In that role, “she attended
board meetings, wrote an op-ed on defense policy, and provided general
guidance, as all Crossroads board members do, on the organization’s activities
and policies,” said Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio.
Sanchez said Wilson does
not currently have an “existing relationship or communication with Crossroads
GPS.” Outside spending groups such as Crossroads are not allowed to coordinate directly
with candidates.
Like the Crossroads ad,
another pair of August ads funded by anonymous money labeled Heinrich an
irresponsible spender. The American Future Fund, the conservative Iowa
nonprofit, signed up to spend almost $97,000 on ads. Americans for
Prosperity ordered almost $328,000 in ads in August.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the only trade association
spending money in Albuquerque in August, spent more than $67,000 on ads
criticizing Heinrich.
Heinrich’s campaign has seized on the outside money on the
conservative side even as he has benefited from dark money spending by liberal
groups.
Last week, his campaign put out an ad featuring TVs playing conservative
attack ads arriving at an airport luggage carousel. “Here they come,” the
narrator says. “The special interests are here to distort Martin Heinrich’s
record.”
Heinrich has also
supported a bill, which has failed twice
in Congress, to require outside spending groups to disclose their donors for
political ads. In March, he sent a letter to the FCC urging it to
swiftly implement greater transparency measures in disclosing who paid for
political ads.
Nonetheless, a coalition
of environmental groups including the League of Conservation Voters and the National
Wildlife Federation Action Fund, has spent more than $1 million supporting
Heinrich, including an ad accusing Wilson of being
too cozy with polluting corporations.
In August, the coalition put
in orders for more than $70,000 for TV ads in Albuquerque. (Most of the
environmental groups’ spending took place earlier in the summer, before the FCC
required TV stations to put political ad files online.)
On Tuesday an official
from the League of Conservation Voters sent out a press release claiming the groups’
spending had decisively turned the race in Heinrich’s favor.
Another group, the
Citizens for Strength and Security Fund, ordered about $218,000 in commercials
to aid Heinrich in Albuquerque in August. Its ad says that Wilson is “promising
more tax giveaways for millionaires”:
So what is the Citizens for Strength and Security Fund? Its
website says it is a social welfare nonprofit formed in
2011 to strengthen the country and make the middle class more secure. Yet the
site uses the same clip art, cites the same issues, and repeats much of the
language as a now-defunct website for a similarly named group, the Citizens for
Strength and Security Action Fund, or CSS Action Fund, that spent millions on
ads supporting Democrats in the 2010 election.
A ProPublica story in
August
detailed how some social welfare nonprofits pop up for elections and disappear,
only to re-form later, always staying a step ahead of the IRS. ProPublica found
that some groups, including the CSS Action Fund, never applied to the IRS for
recognition of their nonprofit status.
A March 2 letter in the
FCC filings from Albuquerque says the Citizens for Strength and Security Fund
is run by Lora Haggard, the chief financial officer for John Edwards’ campaign
in 2008. The other officer named is Jeremy Van Ess, another longtime operative
who works for Hilltop Public Solutions, a Beltway consulting
firm that supports Democratic causes. The two people listed as running the CSS
Action Fund (the earlier nonprofit) worked for Hilltop.
Haggard didn’t return
calls for comment. Van Ess confirmed the group’s spending in New Mexico and
said it had not applied to the IRS for recognition of its tax status because it
was not required to do so. He declined to answer any other questions about Citizens
for Strength and Security.
