NATE JENKINS / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Friday, May 5, 2006 7:00 pm
Like a telemarketer who repeats the same lines, Lydia Guzman doesn’t have to think of an answer when asked about her state’s extraordinary campaign-finance laws.
The question about Arizona’s laws has become so common she always has a response at the ready: “When they ask about it, I just say that without that, what consequences would a violator have?”
A shake-up in the Arizona Legislature that has attracted little, if any, attention in Nebraska — despite similarities between it and the case against University of Nebraska Regent David Hergert — is behind the calls to Guzman, who works for the Clean Elections Institute, a watchdog group in Arizona.
Nebraska lawmakers have said the Hergert case represents an unprecedented court test of whether campaign-finance violations justify removing an elected official from office. Supporters hope it will send a message to future candidates.
But if Hergert, whose impeachment trial begins Monday before the Nebraska Supreme Court, is unseated, it won’t be the first time an elected official has been booted from office for breaking campaign-finance laws.
That happened three months ago, when the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the decision of a state campaign finance committee to remove state Sen. David Burnell Smith from the Arizona Legislature for violating spending limits in a 2004 campaign. Last week, the same court released its reasoning.
The decision to unseat Smith stemmed from the section of Arizona campaign-finance law Guzman is frequently called on to explain. It says that if a candidate who receives public campaign money breaks state laws tied its use, he or she can be removed from office.
That’s much more explicit than the comparatively abstract legal intrepretations drawn to justify Hergert’s removal from office for violating campaign finance law during his successful 2004 run for the regents.
Smith was booted after he racked up more campaign expenses than the state money he received to run his campaign could cover. He argued to the Arizona high court that impeachment and recall are the only means of unseating a legislator, but the court disagreed.
The mechanism for removing him from office was different than the one being used in Nebraska and may not be cited in legal arguments made to this state’s high court during the Hergert trial. But the rationale underpinning the Arizona law is similar to one used to argue for Hergert’s removal.
“He won because he cheated,” and therefore should be removed from office, said Guzman. “The fact is that when a candidate cheats and wins (in Arizona) one of the things they agree to is that they shall be fired or removed from office.”
Some advocates of stronger campaign-finance laws say the Arizona decision and a similar consequence for Hergert could bolster compliance with state campaign-finance laws, and give them needed teeth.
“We support energetic enforcement of campaign finance laws and we think it’s appropriate that people who get elected by breaking the rules should lose that position,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “Campaign finance laws only work if there’s sufficient enforcement mechanisms available.”
The Brennan Center helped craft Nebraska’s campaign-finance law.
The Arizona case, she said, is “one more example that states are getting more serious about their campaign-finance laws.”
But even among advocates of election laws who are hopeful the Arizona and Nebraska cases will bolster compliance, some are skeptical that the route being taken with the Hergert case is a positive one. Their criticisms are similar to Nebraska state senators who worried that impeaching Hergert for campaign-related activities instead of offenses clearly committed in office and related to the duties of regent had political shades.
Without knowing specifics of the Hergert case, election and campaign-finance experts say that as a general rule, impeachment is a problematic punishment for campaign violations.
One reason, said a California media consultant whose clients have included Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, is that the impeachment is perceived by both politicians and the public as a weapon with an overtly partisan edge. The threat of impeachment loosely bandied about during the past two presidential administrations is one reason, said consultant Bill Whalen.
Asked if impeachment is useful to help enforce campaign-finance laws, Whalen said no.
“I would worry … that they would use impeachment to score political points,” said Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “As long as campaign finance laws exist, candidates are either going to break them or bend them to their advantage. Unfortunately in politics, (crafting laws to respond to campaign tactics) is a game of catch-up.”
The game is made fair, according to the leader of a group pushing for campaign-finance reform, when the standards and punishments are so clear that they remove any political influence, as is the case in Arizona.
Such influence is inherent to parts of the impeachment process, said Nick Nyhart, executive director of Public Campaign. The Washington, D.C.-based group pushes for laws such Arizona’s that allow candidates to automatically receive state campaign funds.
“To the extent the (impeachment) process is conducted by politicians, people could use the power of impeachment in a political way,” said Nyhart, adding it is preferable to have standards such as those in Arizona that make it clear that “when people cheat on the system they’re thrown out of office.”
Arguments that Hergert should be tossed from office hinge on such issues as the allegation he breached the oath of office and whether a campaign statement with false information he signed before taking the regent’s seat but that the state received after he took office constitutes a violation while “in office.” The state constitution says impeachable offenses are those that occur while in office.
Said Nyhart: “You get better justice when the law is clear.”
Reach Nate Jenkins at 473-7223 or njenkins@journalstar.com.