Moxie Media’s unacceptable behavior fuels voter cynicism

Published 3:18 pm Tuesday, November 2, 2010

In one state Senate race, Tuesday may not have marked the end of the 2010 campaign season. In the 38th District (Everett, Marysville), violations of public disclosure law may have so corrupted the August primary that the only cure is a new election. The Public Disclosure Commission last week referred the case to Attorney General Rob McKenna for prosecution. McKenna promptly filed suit in Thurston County against Moxie Media, the Seattle consulting firm waging the transgressive campaign.

Jaded voters may assume that this is just politics as usual. It’s not. One of the more toxic consequences of pervasive cynicism is a lost sense of fair play, an inability to muster outrage when outrage is the right response. Politics has rarely been pretty or even civil, but there are rules and laws governing campaign behavior. When they are broken, democracy loses.

Briefly, here’s what happened.

On behalf of a liberal coalition of unions and trial lawyers, Moxie Media worked to defeat incumbent state Sen. Jean Berkey and elect Democrat Nick Harper. Berkey, a Democrat and member of the Legislature’s Roadkill Caucus, incurred progressives’ wrath for being too moderate and too reluctant to raise taxes. The firm channeled more than $280,000 to boost Harper and bash Berkey for being too conservative.

That wasn’t all. Moxie Media decided they also needed to attack Berkey from the right to send centrists to the Republican/Conservative challenger, Rod Rieger. Prior to Moxie Media’s unwanted intervention on his behalf, Rieger had attracted little attention or funding. The firm created a pair of phony political action committees — Conservative PAC and Cut Taxes PAC — to send postcards and make robocalls to likely Republican voters. The campaign pushed the theme that Berkey supported higher taxes and Reiger was the true small government conservative.

It’s this pro-Rieger effort — just $9,000 — that crossed the line. Working with Moxie Media were representatives of the Washington State Labor Council’s DIME PAC, the Washington Federation of State Employees, and Forward PAC, a trial-lawyer group. No one would mistake any of the backers for fiscal conservatives backing Rieger, so burying the collaboration was essential to its success.

Berkey finished third, losing by 122 votes, making her the only incumbent legislator bounced in August. The week before the primary, Jerry Cornfield reported in The Herald that Moxie Media was behind the pro-Rieger material. At the time, though, there was nothing to indicate who was paying for the ads and a search of the Public Disclosure Commission’s website would have failed to uncover the sponsorships. Running the money through two layers of PACs allowed the firm to hide the origins of the money.

Shortly after the primary, Berkey filed complaints with the PDC and the state attorney general charging violations of the Public Disclosure Act and seeking a do-over. PDC staff conducted an extensive investigation, uncovering a rat’s nest of hurry-up emails, financial pledges, strategic discussions, and — most tellingly — a deliberate attempt to conceal the donors’ identities until after the primary.

The machinations were complex, but the intent is clear. In an Aug. 5 e-mail Moxie Media principal Lisa MacLean writes a prospective union backer, “I am trying to provide as much cover to funders as possible. And don’t want funder names on pieces as top 5 contributors. funder (sic) money will not move until after the primary. the (sic) expenses for these pieces and the auto-call will be listed only as debts.”

After reviewing the material, the PDC rejected a staff-recommended $30,000 settlement with Moxie Media. With so much money flowing through politics, the small fine could be considered just another cost of doing business, not enough punishment to change behavior. So they turned the case over to McKenna.

A closer look at Moxie Media’s behavior on behalf of liberal groups uncovered a maze of transactions involving some 40 PACs in a handful of key legislative races.

Erin McCallum, head of the business-backed Enterprise Washington, calls it a spider-web that makes it hard for voters to follow the money.

“It’s wrong,” she says. “But things like this can win elections.”

And, in Snohomish County, it looks like it did. They shouldn’t get by with it.

Richard S. Davis, president of the Washington Research Council, writes on public policy, economics and politics. His e-mail address is richardsdavis@gmail.com.