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BRENT BATTEN

Brent Batten: Florida legislator challenges campaign ad money 'shell game'

Brent Batten
brent.batten@naplesnews.com; 239-263-4776
Brent Batten

State Rep. Joe Gruters believes he was one campaign mailer away from losing.

Now the freshman Sarasota Republican is sponsoring a bill that would make it easier for similarly situated candidates in the future to know who is behind such mail-borne attacks.

Two groups — the Committee to Protect Florida and Stop Benefits to Illegals Now — sent about a dozen mailers attacking Gruters in the weeks before the August primary election.

“Those guys almost took me out. I won by 385 votes. If they would have sent one more mailer, they would have done it. All I want to do is go thank them for not sending that last mailer,” Gruters said, explaining, in jest perhaps, his rationale for House Bill 1057.

The bill, which has a companion in the Senate sponsored by Sen. Debbie Mayfield, R-Melbourne, would prohibit one political committee from donating money to another political committee.

The movement of money among committees has become standard procedure in Tallahassee, where groups with names like Leadership for Florida’s Future, Protect Florida’s Families and Citizens for Justice routinely donate large sums to each other before eventually putting the money into ads, mailers and other campaign costs.

A good example was the August Republican primary for state Senate District 28 between Collier County’s Matt Hudson and Kathleen Passidomo, one of the expensive and hotly contested Senate races in state history.

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One political committee, Conservatives, spent $500,000 on ads attacking Passidomo. Conservatives got about that same amount from Sun Coast Patriots, which got a similar amount from Making the Right Call for Florida, a political committee chaired by Hudson.

Meanwhile, Floridians for Economic Opportunity, which got more than $100,000 from political committees Citizens First, First Amendment Fund and Main Street Leadership Council, was busy spending money attacking Hudson.

The process, which Gruters refers to with terms like “shell game” and “money laundering,” makes it difficult, if not impossible, to know exactly who is behind many of the attack ads that are so prevalent in the weeks leading up to an election.

“It provides an opportunity for a cloak and dagger game. I’m a CPA and I can’t trace it,” said Gruters of the “dark money” that poured into his race. “I can’t say who spent the value of condo trying to take me out.”

Personal “gratitude” aside, Gruters, who won the November general election by a comfortable margin, said the real motive for his bill is to bring transparency to campaign spending.

“I’m not trying to limit someone’s free speech. I’m trying to shed some Florida sunshine on all of this,” he said.

But telling one political committee it can’t give money to another political committee could be construed as limiting someone’s free speech, even if that someone is a committee.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled corporations and unions have free speech rights and can devote unlimited amounts to political spending. Why would a committee be any different?

If passed, the new law could be challenged in court on that question.

“If it is challenged, I’m hoping common sense would prevail,” Gruters said.

Major corporations in Florida — U.S. Sugar, Florida Power and Light, and Disney, to name a few — are major contributors to political committees. But the money often moves to another committee, and another, and another before it goes to any political activity.

It’s entirely possible a donor would write a $100,000 check to a committee based solely on the donor’s trust in the committee’s ability to do the right thing with the money.

But it’s also possible the donor has a specific use in mind and makes that desire known when the money is handed over. When money moves among committees before being put to real use, it raises the suspicion that the donor doesn’t want to be connected to actual campaign spending.

“It’s almost like a laundering process to conceal the identity of the contributors,” Gruters said.

So far, Gruters’ bill has attracted only one co-sponsor, Rep. Sam Killebrew of Polk County.

Mayfield’s companion bill likewise has just one co-sponsor, Sen. Greg Steube of Sarasota.

No committee hearings have been scheduled in either chamber.

Gruters said he has been trying to drum up support of new members of the Legislature, those who haven’t formed ties with the network of committees that move money around in Tallahassee.

“The longer you stay in the system, the more you see it (dark money) could be beneficial,” Gruters said.

Connect with Brent Batten at brent.batten@naplesnews.com, on Twitter@NDN_BrentBatten and at facebook.com/ndnbrentbatten.