Disclosure of campaign donors matters

Final week, the State Public Disclosure Fee despatched a message to Attorney General Bob Ferguson and different candidates who’re making an attempt to maintain voters in the dead of night about their donors.

Ferguson is working for governor in 2024, and he transferred $1.2 million left over from his previous legal professional common marketing campaign to his gubernatorial marketing campaign. He made that switch beneath the wire, proper earlier than state marketing campaign finance officers clarified formally that for such transfers candidates not solely should get permission from donors in writing, but in addition should disclose whose permission they obtained.

Beforehand, candidates may hold all these names secret regardless of the state’s strong marketing campaign finance disclosure guidelines. Ferguson has argued that the brand new guidelines don’t apply to his switch so he’s not going to make the names public. That’s a selection — a selection in favor of secrecy and in opposition to the folks’s curiosity in transparency.

There’s a loophole lurking within the secrecy, too. Somebody who gave the utmost to Ferguson’s legal professional common race and had the funds transferred now can max out on the gubernatorial race, too, doubling what they may in any other case legally give.

Ferguson isn’t the one candidate who narrowly beat the deadline. State Sen. Manka Dhingra, a Democrat from Redmond, transferred a relatively small $74,000 surplus to a brand new marketing campaign to succeed Feguson as legal professional common. There is likely to be others.

Final week, the PDC gave each indication that such secrecy is just not acceptable. In a case out of Spokane that targeted on a 2021 switch of surplus marketing campaign funds, the commission ruled that the brand new steerage didn’t apply as a result of the candidate couldn’t see that the change was coming. Two years in the past, nobody was speaking about it. Ferguson, Dhingra and anybody else who transferred within the spring don’t have that excuse. They certainly knew the PDC was poised to behave. They rushed to get their transfers in beneath the wire.

The PDC additionally famous that the 2021 election is lengthy over, so there’s not a lot level retroactively making use of the rule to it. The 2024 election, the ruling conspicuously left unsaid, is simply getting underway. The cash flowing into 2024 campaigns issues lots, so disclosure issues.

There’s a pending problem to Ferguson’s switch which may resolve all this sometime. Nevertheless, he and anybody else selecting secrecy about their transfers ought to see the writing on the wall and launch their donor data earlier than the PDC compels them to take action.

It’s not too late to do the appropriate factor.