Colorado has strict limits on donations to political campaigns. No person may contribute more than $500 to any campaign for Governor. If you count both primary and the general election, that amounts to $1000 per election cycle.
But some people think that laws are only for poor folks. Rich guys can hire lawyers, after all. And breaking the law? It's OK if you're a Republican.
Just hire a lawyer. And if you're a Colorado Republican with bags of money to give away and a willingness to skirt the law, your go-to lawyer is Ryan Richard Call.
Back in 2006, a group of rich Colorado Republicans hatched a plan to skirt the campaign finance laws using a 527 front group called Trailhead. The plan was that the rich guys would give money to Trailhead, who would launder the money through other Republican PACs who would either donate to Colorado Republicans running for office, or give it back to Trailhead who would donate to Republicans. Trailhead's financial shenanigans were exposed by the invaluable work of Colorado Confidential, an online newspaper since renamed the Colorado Independent.
Trailhead was funded by people like Bruce Benson, Joel Farkas, and beer mogul Pete Coors. But the biggest contributor to Trailhead was the Republican Governor's Association (RGA), which ponied up for a cool half million. And who was the lawyer who filed the papers that created Trailhead? A newly-minted JD named Richard Ryan Call.
The problems with Trailhead exploded into full view with the Independent's investigation. Trailhead was engaged in shady financial transactions with other 527's, often trading thousands of dollars in "contributions" with each other on the same day, including many unreported transactions. Trailhead failed to register as a corporation, as required by law. Trailhead officials held secret meetings with Colorado's (Republican) Secretary of State.
Even more disturbing was what Trailhead did with their cash. Their operation was little more than a smear machine, dropping megabuck bombs of negative ads into several local Colorado races.
Following the PR disaster of Trailhead, Colorado changed its laws for 527 organizations to make financial disclosure faster and more transparent. Prior to the law change, donors to 527s in Colorado could remain anonymous. Now they can't.
So what's a sleazy Republican to do in the new legal regime of 2010?
Hire Richard Ryan Call again, and set up a new group to skirt the law, again. The new group is called "A Brighter Colorado." And it's not a 527 group, it's a 501(c)(4) group. Which means that its donors can remain anonymous (under federal law that is).
A Brighter Colorado filed its organizational papers with the Colorado SoS on March 11, 2010. As a 501(c)(4), it claims to be a "social welfare" organization. That would normally be something like the YMCA or the Salvation Army. A 501(c)(4) can engage in political activity, as long as that's not its primary purpose. But it appears that A Brighter Colorado is lying through its teeth. The only thing it's been doing, as far as I can tell, is political activity. It has no website, for example, which is rather unusual for a group really interested in social welfare. For a group that wants to hide its donors and identity, however, that would make perfect sense.
Just a few weeks after organizing, A Brighter Colorado donated $200,000 to none other than the Republican Governor's Association. You may recall that the RGA was the biggest funder of Trailhead in 2006, so it's rather interesting that A Brighter Colorado is now passing a big chunk of that money back to the RGA.
Then, earlier this summer, billboards and bus-stop signs like this began appearing around Denver promoting Republican Scott McInnis for Governor:
The odd thing was that these McInnis billboards had different graphic design elements than McInnis's own billboards. And that's because McInnis's campaign didn't pay for these McInnis billboards. They were bought by A Brighter Colorado.
Hmmmmm.
There are several lines of investigation that need to be pursued here. First, it seems that A Brighter Colorado is actually a PAC and not a social welfare organization. Therefore it is in violation of the law. At a minimum, its donors should be revealed. At maximum, it should be prosecuted and shut down. That's the federal violation.
Second, there may be a state violation too. Since the change in Colorado's campaign finance law, any organization that engages in political activity must register with the Colorado SoS and file reports on its donors and expenditures. It would certainly seem that A Brighter Colorado would qualify. But a search of the SoS website shows no contributions either from or to A Brighter Colorado. Which seems to imply that they haven't been filing reports.
There are a few bright spots here, though: first, A Brighter Colorado hasn't engaged in the kind of smear tactics that Trailhead was notorious for. (Yet.) And second, McInnis's campaign crashed and burned after it was revealed that he earned $300,000 for a plagiarized report.
We can only hope that The Colorado Independent is on the trail(head) again ...