Application for a Show Cause Order, and a request for Permanent Injunctive Relief was filed last week in Maricopa County Superior Court against the Arizona Clean Elections Commission by attorney Timothy La Sota for Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne.
For years, the Arizona Clean Elections Commission has allowed itself to be used as a vehicle to attack political enemies whether or not the candidates in questions come under their purview or not.
Finally, the Attorney General is challenging the Commission after it announced that it would launch a probe into his re-election campaign which was spurred by claims made by a former short-term employee an, who is rumored to be operative for his political challenger.
Sarah Beattie, the short term employee of the Attorney General’s Office, filed a complaint with the Commission, “claiming that various employees of the Attorney General’s Office had engaged in campaign activity while physically at the Attorney General’s Office. Beattie filed the complaint with both the Clean Elections Commission and the Secretary of State,” according to legal documents. Both entities are currently investigating this complaint.
Beattie has been described as a young woman with a troubled past, rife with cocaine use and employment as a stripper, who is represented by attorney Tom Ryan, who has been described as, “an extreme leftwing ideologue who worked with Randy Parraz.” Paraz was behind the successful recall of Arizona Senator Russell Pearce.
According to the popular conservative blog, Seeingredaz.com, “Beattie previously worked as an Executive Assistant to John McCain. Beattie has also worked for Jeff Flake and Bill Montgomery.”
Horne’s attorney note in the request for relief that Beattie’s complaint is “completely without merit. To the extent that anything she alleges is even truthful, the complained of conduct is de minimis water cooler talk that occurs in any office. If the activity amounts to a violation of law, then any time any time employees talk about the Super Bowl or last night’s episode of American Idol, or call their spouses or family members from work they are guilty of a theft-related crime.”
Beattie alleges that Horne used state offices and state employees during working hours to conduct campaign business. State law bans politicking on state time.
According to the Arizona Republic, Beattie’s attorney, Tom Ryan, told commissioners at a hearing on June 17, that they should consider one key question: “Where is Mr. Horne’s headquarters? If you do not have a headquarters outside your executive office, you have some very serious violations that occurred.”
According to sources, Beattie has made allegations involving what she and AG staffer Brett Mecum did during their work day, but her own time cards appear to be falsified. Horne’s attorney, Sandra Slaton, argued that Beattie’s credibility was questionable and noted that Beattie either lied on her time cards by saying she worked full time for the Attorney General’s Office, or lied when she said she spent most of her workdays working on the campaign.
But at the heart of the case is the question as to whether the Commission has the “authority to investigate and sanction nonparticipating candidates.”
Horne’s lawyer asserts that the Clean Elections Commission has no power to investigate or sanction the Plaintiff. “First, the law is clear that any alleged campaign finance violations committed by nonparticipating candidates must be referred to the Secretary of State for a determination if there is reasonable cause to believe a campaign finance statute has been violated. Second, the assertion by the Clean Elections Commission that it had authority to investigate and sanction nonparticipating candidates was a stunning power grab that was not asserted by the Commission until fifteen years after the law was passed by the voters.”
Further La Sota argues, “… the notion that this Commission has the power to remove nonparticipating elected officials from office and disqualify candidates who are not participating in the Clean Elections system is wholly unsupported by the legislative history of the Act.”
Even the Clean Elections Commission’s Executive Director, in the past, has taken the position that it is the proper jurisdiction to review these campaign finance law complaints, according to court documents.
Yet, it is the overreach and subversion of the people’s candidates that has most people disturbed. The Commission asserts that it can remove a candidate from consideration of the voters if they find the candidate has violated elections that should not even apply to the candidate.
“The other major problem is that the voters would have intended to permit the Clean Elections Commission to impose the “death penalty” on candidates and elected officials, yet would have eschewed lesser penalties,” write Horne’s attorneys. “It makes little sense that this Commission would be vested with such a harsh penalty to impose on nonparticipating candidates, yet not be vested with any lesser penalties.”
In other words, after the candidate has demonstrated the support of citizens across Arizona for their place on the ballot, and unelected commissioners can disenfranchise the voters for even a small infraction of the law.
The law governing the Citizens Clean Elections Commission requires that “no more than two members of the commission shall be members of the same political party. No more than two members of the commission shall be residents of the same county.”
According to the Commission’s website, “The Citizens Clean Elections Act, which was passed by voters in 1998, created a new campaign financing system that provides full public funding to qualified candidates who agree to abide by the Citizens Clean Elections Commission guidelines. Candidates for statewide and legislative offices are eligible to participate in the public funding program.”
The commission itself is fairly opaque; offering voters little information about their jurisdiction and duties. Their website offers little other than a handful of cute minute long videos.
In its filing against Horne, the Commission not only relies on the previously mentioned shaky interpretation of law, but more importantly, the Commission offers falsehoods as fact.
The Commission’s assertion that the “fact” that Horne’s campaign does not have a separate headquarters is prima facie evidence that his campaign must be working out of state offices and on state time. But the “fact” of the matter is that Horne’s campaign does have a separate headquarters located at Thomas and 24th.
As a result of such glaring mistakes, or lies, it is not difficult to see why the Commission’s decision appears to be simply political.
In light of the fact that complaints of campaign finance violations by nonparticipating candidates have been and as Horne’s attorney writes, “It was not until nearly fourteen years after passage of the Clean Elections Act that the Commission formally asserted this power via a new rule,” it is nearly impossible to believe that the Commission’s decision to proceed against Horne was strictly political.