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Brewer, Goddard, Clean Elections and dirty money

E.J. Montini is a columnist for The Arizona Republic.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

I'm guessing that most Arizona citizens don't understand what it means when a candidate runs for office under the Clean Elections law.

I say this because much of the time I don't know what that means either.

That is particularly true today, when we are reading news reports about a complaint filed by Democrats against the campaign of Republican Gov. Jan Brewer.

Here are the basics:

Because Brewer declared herself a Clean Elections candidate she will receive roughly $1 million in public money to run her general election campaign. BUT, once a candidate agrees to take taxpayer case, he or she cannot solicit outside money.

Democrats claim that is what Brewer is doing.

They point to the fact that the Republican Governors Association has committed to spend $1.2 million in Arizona. (They can do this as long as Brewer doesn't participate in their effort.)

The thing is, Brewer provided a link to the association's website on her campaign Facebook page. The Republican Governors page, in turn, urges viewers to "show your support for Governor Brewer." Meantime, a spokesman for the organization said that asking donors to "show your support for Governor Brewer" doesn't "benefit" Brewer directly.

Come on? Who's kidding whom?

Take the names and party affiliations out of this for one second. If you came across a political website urging you to "show your support for candidate John Doe" and then were told by the website that the money sent based on that solicitation would not directly benefit John Doe would you believe them?

The fact is, however, by the time the secretary of state or the Citizens Clean Elections Commission get around to investigating all this and coming to any conclusion the election will be long over.

In the meantime, Brewer's people will say this is all a smokescreen thrown up by supporters of Democrat Terry Goddard.

And if you support Brewer, that may be enough for you.

As for everyone else, the whole point of Clean Elections was to keep dirty money out of Arizona politics.

How's that going?