Outside groups manipulate Ky. voter impressions

If you believe that Alison Lundergan Grimes would be a carbon copy of President Barack Obama if she's elected to the U.S. Senate, chances are that your impression has been created, at least in part, by a group you know next to nothing about.

The Kentucky Opportunity coalition is the biggest spender of all the outside interest groups that have been active in Kentucky during the 2014 U.S. Senate race, already having spent nearly $12.6 million airing more than 10,000 television spots from Missouri to Ohio to West Virginia to all points in between — many of them trying to make you think the worst of Grimes.

The group is run by a former campaign staffer of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and a handful of Republican activists, and it's one of the many groups on both sides of the election that have combined to spend tens of millions of dollars over the past year and a half trying to influence your vote.

Scott Jennings, the former campaign staffer who serves as the face of the organization, wouldn't speculate as to why donors would want to keep their names secret.

"The Kentucky Opportunity Coalition ... has spent approximately $14 million in television ads over the last two years, largely on ensuring citizens know the impact of critical issues such as the War on Coal, the death tax, and Obamacare," he said in a statement.

"The coalition abides by all rules and regulations when it comes to it's filings with the IRS. We are grateful to have the resources to further the organization's mission. We have no comment on why individual donors give to one organization versus another, but we are grateful that so many people are interested in furthering our state's public discourse."

Nationally, as of Friday afternoon, Robert Maguire, of the Center for Responsive Politics, said outside groups have spent $454 million trying to influence voters in this year's federal elections — $141 million of that has come from so-called "dark money" groups like the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition.

The Kentucky Opportunity Coalition was created as a non-profit organization and isn't required by the law to reveal who contributes to it.

The only requirement is that it spend a significant portion of its money on "educational" efforts but voters often have difficulty distinguishing between such "educational" ads and "political" ones, Maguire said. The Center for Responsive politics doesn't include the money spent on "educational" ads as part of the spending on the election even though he said the messages are often intended to influence votes.

In Kentucky, dark money groups have spent about $12 million on McConnell and $566,453 supporting Grimes. Half of the the McConnell money came from the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition and doesn't even count millions in "educational" ads for for which the group has paid.

The proliferation of such outside groups over the years has happened in part because of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have chipped away at campaign finance laws that limited such giving and spending. McConnell has been quite often at the forefront of the battles — either filing lawsuits to challenge the regulations or filing briefs with the court arguing in favor of limiting laws.

One of those laws he challenged was the McCain-Feingold law, which sought to reduce the amount of soft money contributions to political parties and limit campaign ads by outside groups in the final weeks of campaigns.

"The worst day of my political life was when President George W. Bush signed McCain-Feingold into law in the early part of the first administration," McConnell told a group of millionaires and billionaires at a summit arranged by Charles and David Koch.

McConnell couches campaign finance reform as a freedom of speech issue.

"Senator McConnell has been the U.S. Senate's foremost defender of the First Amendment for years and he has defended the freedom of speech for his critics just as aggressively as those who agree with his point of view," his campaign spokeswoman Allison Moore said in a statement.

"Never was that so apparent than when he defended the right of candidates to use their own resources to campaign when he was running against a self-funding millionaire in 2008," she said, referring to his race against Democrat Bruce Lunsford.

Grimes has said she favors campaign finance reform that would limit contributions to political organizations. In a statement, Charly Norton, her spokewoman, said throwing million of dollars worth of dark money ads at Grimes is failing.

"For over 15 months, Mitch McConnell and his billionaire backers have thrown millions of dollars into the wind and claimed that they would knock Alison out of this race — it's clearly not working," Norton said.

During the 2014 election cycle, McConnell has benefited mightily from the Supreme Courts decisions striking down the laws.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, outside groups have spent more than $20 million trying to help McConnell be reelected while other organizations have poured in more than $8 million to help Grimes.

David Donnelly, executive director of Every Voice Action, which agitates for campaign finance reform, said the problem with groups such as Kentucky Opportunity Coalition is that voters who see their ads on television have no way of knowing who is trying to influence them.

Donnelly's group has a non-profit organization as well, but he said it voluntarily discloses its donors on its website.

"These are important elections and voters need to know where they are getting information from," he said. "We have to treat those messages suspiciously. Part of evaluating the message in a political ad is knowing who is paying for it."

He said another problem with dark money is it leads to "the most harshest and negative political ads."

Furthermore, Donnelly said one needs to know who is paying for ads in order to judge whether any donor has undue influence.

Maguire said that even the Supreme Court in striking down campaign finance laws has backed the idea of disclosing the names of donors.

Bradley Smith, chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, however, said that it is understandable that some contributors would want to keep their names private, especially after Democrats have loudly criticized donors like the Koch brothers for their millions in giving to conservative causes.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid even took to the well of the Senate last year to blame the Koch's for last year's government shutdown.

"If we want to get more disclosure from these groups, somebody of some prominence in the Democratic Party, maybe Alison Lundergan Grimes, has to come out and say, 'This harassment of donors to these groups has to stop,'" Smith said. "The fear is palpable and it is real."

The "harassment" ranges from Reid's statements, to consumer boycotts against companies and their owners who are involved in the political process, to threats from lawmakers to impact legislation either supported or opposed by donors.

Furthermore, Smith said disclosure of such donors could chill the political speech of some potential donors because disclosing them could harm some personal or business relationships. For instance, he said that a lawyer for a firm that represents gas and oil interests might not feel free to contribute to a group concerned about climate change if that donation would be made public.

But Maguire, however, noted that even Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia favors disclosure.

In a 2010 ruling that forced the state of Washington to reveal the names of people who had signed a petition in support of gay rights, the Republican appointee said, "Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed. For my part, I do not look forward to a society which, thanks to the Supreme Court, campaigns anonymously. ...

"This does not resemble the Home of the Brave," he wrote.

Reporter Joseph Gerth can be reached at (502) 582-4702. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Gerth.