Report: New Mexico Graded

New Mexico received an "F" in an evaluation of campaign finance reporting requirements that states impose—or fail to impose—on outside groups spending money in elections.

With a possible high score of 120, New Mexico received a zero in the National Institute of Money in State Politics' 2014 scorecard that looked at "essential" disclosure requirements for political committees and nonprofits spending money in elections.

The institute gave 23 states and New Mexico an "F" on its scorecard. But we're also only one of four states to get a "zero" score, notes former state Sen. Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque, who authored legislation that imposed limits on contributions made directly to candidates, starting in 2011. "Read it and weep," she writes in an email. "Not only did we flunk, we got zero while the red states around us got As."

The scorecard ranked whether a state imposed reporting requirements on outside groups making "independent expenditures."

The US Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission granted individuals and organizations the ability to raise and spend unlimited amounts of cash in elections. But there's a caveat: Groups not subject to contribution limits must not coordinate how that money is spent with a candidate.

Organizations making independent expenditures in elections usually fall under two legal entities: political action committees commonly referred to as "super PACs" and nonprofits. "Independent spenders" has become a catchall for these different groups.

A super PAC is specifically formed to spend money in elections. It can raise and spend unlimited amounts of cash if there's no coordination on the spending side with a candidate. It must also disclose donors on the federal level as well as in New Mexico. Still, New Mexico's campaign finance laws fail to define what constitutes "coordination" between independent spenders and candidates.

501(c)4 nonprofits must comply with IRS guidelines that prohibit them from expressly advocating for a candidate and from using a certain amount of resources for political activities. But they don't have to disclose contributors, thanks in part to the 1958 US Supreme Court ruling in Alabama v NAACP, in which the state of Alabama attempted to force the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to reveal the names and addresses of its agents. (Some legal scholars, it should be noted, reject the use of the Alabama v NAACP ruling, made in the backdrop of violence against black people in the South, to justify unreported communications in modern-day elections).

State Sen. Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, has said that he will reintroduce legislation in the 2015 session that would impose stricter reporting requirements on independent spenders. His proposal cleared the state Senate last year before dying in the state House.

The institute's scorecard measured whether states require independent spenders to report when they communicate to voters in an election, what candidate that communication is supporting or targeting and what contributors financed that communication.

New Mexico currently has no such requirements.

Santa Fe Reporter