Hannah Beth Jackson has received $170,000 from lobbyists through Independent Expenditures

The Issue: The Sacramento Bee reported today that independent expenditures, committees who support candidates financially with or without a candidate’s permission have spent in excess of $1 million so far in California State election races.  This is not including the amount of money that has been contributed directly to candidates within the state limits.

An Independent Expediture (or IE) is a committee that is not required to follow the normal campaign contribution laws.  They have no cap on how much money they spend on a campaign.  Here is the catch:  the actual candidate can have no say in the use of the money.  This means that a candidate that chooses to run a positive, mud-free campaign might have an independent expenditure supporting them that makes outragous or out-of-context claims about that candidate’s opponent.  This means that through no fault of their own, a candidate might find advertisements appearing in the mail, on television or on the radio bashing their opponent in a distasteful way.  The actions are normally associated by the voters to the candidates campaign when in reality they had nothing to do with it.

Some candidates might use this to their advantage, purposely taking the high road and allowing an IE to be the bad guys.  They might even be in collusion with the IE (which is illegal).  I have personally seen a campaign where an IE supporting a candidate was being run by the candidate’s father.  It’s impossible for such a situation to exist without the candidate having some sort of input into the direction the IE’s actions.

The Solution: Make Independent Expenditures Illegal

This would truly cap the amount of money a single interest group can contribute to candidates and lower the influence of lobbyists.  This will most definitely have to be completed through referendum because the interests who currently contribute to our candidates will work hard to continue to have their influence.  It can be done.