Former University of Nebraska Regent Dave Hergert joined an exclusive club Friday, becoming the second person in the country to be ousted from office for flouting campaign finance laws.

National advocates of stronger campaign finance laws say the Nebraska Legislature’s vote to impeach Hergert and the state Supreme Court’s decision to convict him on two of 10 charges sends a strong message.

“Laws were meant to be followed,” said Rick Bielke, communications director for Public Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates publicly funded elections. “Instead of giving someone a slap on the wrist, the Nebraska Supreme Court and the Legislature enforced the laws on their books.”

Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers said he believes the Supreme Court decision sets an important legal precedent lawmakers in other states could use as a basis for impeachment.

“They’re not binded by (the high court’s decision) but it does give them something they can look to,” he said. “I think it will have a bearing across the country.”

At the very least, Nebraska’s actions show the state takes enforcement of campaign finance law seriously, said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, associate counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. The center helped craft Nebraska’s campaign-finance law.

“It may begin a trend of more stringent enforcement of campaign finance laws,” she said.

The landscape could change now that two states have removed elected officials from office for violating campaign finance laws, Bielke said.

“It will be interesting to see in the future, when (states) are considering campaign finance laws, adding teeth, whether they will look at options of impeachment or removal from office,” he said.

Hergert is the only official actually removed from office through impeachment, said Torres-Spelliscy.

In the 1980s, former Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham faced impeachment allegations over campaign finance, but he eventually was removed from office for other transgressions.

David Burnell Smith is the only other official besides Hergert who has been removed from office for campaign-finance violations. Smith was removed from the Arizona Legislature last year by a campaign finance commission, which, through a relatively new publicly financed campaign system, has sanctioning powers that include the authority to remove officials from office.

Smith’s attorneys argued unsuccessfully that the only means of removing him from office were impeachment or recall.

That case was really the test of new law, Bielke said.

“Someone tested it to see if it had teeth, and he got bit,” he said.

Hergert was ousted by a more traditional, if rarely used, process.

The Nebraska Legislature impeached him on 10 counts, accusing him, among other things, of waiting until after the primary election to file a document that would have given his opponent about $15,000 in matching state funds in the closing days of the campaign.

The high court convicted Hergert on two of the counts — false reporting and obstructing government operations — both of which relate to filings he made after voters elected him.

Incumbent Regent Don Blank, who’d won the primary, lost the general election to Hergert.

But the actions against Hergert didn’t start with the Legislature.

Hergert, who was elected in November 2004, paid $33,512 in fines the following April as part of an agreement with the Accountability and Disclosure Commission to avoid criminal charges.

Two months later, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning began an investigation, but a Lancaster County District judge denied his request for a grand jury based on Hergert’s agreement with the state. 

While the Arizona law offers a more direct route to removing an elected official from office, Frank Daley, head of the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission, said he has mixed feelings about that state’s system. 

“I do have a little unease about an administrative executive branch agency concluding someone should be removed from office.”

Daley said the two processes are different.

Accountability and Disclosure is charged with determining whether someone broke the law and assessing penalties.

The impeachment process is designed to determine whether officials have engaged in conduct that makes them unfit to serve.

Accountability and Disclosure,  which has concurrent jurisdiction with the state attorney general’s office, can assess civil penalties and file criminal charges.

Most of the criminal charges are low-grade misdemeanors, with a maximum fine of $1,000 and a year in jail, “which means we actually have more ‘umph’ with civil penalties,” Daley said.

Assessing civil penalties is fairly common, he said, while criminal prosecution is fairly rare. Many of the cases involve inadvertent mistakes, he said.

Some intentional campaign finance law violations are felonies,  but that part of the law rarely is used. The Supreme Court found Hergert’s actions were intentional, but the charges contained in the articles of impeachment were misdemeanors.

Daley said he’d review how his office handles cases in light of the Hergert case.

“Any time there’s a significant case I suppose it’s appropriate to evaluate how your agency has performed,” he said. “Having said that, I’m happy with the way our agency performed in light of this.”

In most cases, Daley said, he thinks campaign finance law is adequate. A bill passed by the Legislature this year tightens it somewhat.

Of the Hergert decision, Daley said: “I don’t think it’s going to change the campaign landscape except I hope it will cause more candidates to pay close attention to campaign filing requirements and the contents of them.”

Jack Gould, of Common Cause — a government watchdog group that has fought for campaign finance reform in Nebraska — said the Hergert case represented the first real test of the state’s campaign finance laws and could put the Accountability and Disclosure Commission in a stronger position.

The commission “really didn’t have the tools to prove a felony,” he said.

“They didn’t do more because the strongest penalty they thought they could get was a $33,000 fine.”

Chambers said he thinks Accountability and Disclosure can be “beguiled” and would like to see its  investigatory powers moved to the attorney general or county attorneys — a change he said he will try to make during the next Legislative session.

Bill Whalen, a research fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said he hadn’t researched the Nebraska case but, as with any political scandal, believes it needs to be looked at broadly.

The question, he said, is whether this was an individual issue or a systemic problem.

There always will be individuals conniving enough to break any law, he said.

“In some cases someone might just be being greedy,” he said. “Or do (the laws) invite this sort of corruption and abuse?”

Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com. Nate Jenkins contributed to this report.