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Why I filed a campaign finance complaint against the Realtors PAC in Missoula – Daily Montanan [1]

['More From Author', 'August', 'Derek Goldman']

Date: 2023-08-05  

Montana has a long history of wealthy corporations, organizations and individuals using their deep pockets to direct the outcome of elections in our state, dating back to the early Copper Kings of Butte.

And in response, Montana voters have continuously fought to reign in campaign spending by special interests. In 1912, we passed the Corrupt Practices Act by initiative—banning corporate campaign contributions. Exactly 100 years later, even as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that law, voters overwhelmingly passed Initiative I-166, in further opposition to corporate spending in elections. And in 2015, I helped build support for Gov. Steve Bullock’s Montana Disclose Act, to strengthen our campaign finance reporting system. Yet, efforts to influence elections in Montana by well-funded, special-interest groups continues today.

And now it has invaded local municipal elections in Missoula.

That is why I recently filed a formal complaint with the Commissioner of Political Practices about a new political committee called, “Missoula Mayor”—a entity almost entirely funded by the powerful National Association of Realtors. The committee was set up to support local real estate agent and city council member Mike Nugent, who is running to be the next mayor of Missoula. To date, this national real estate lobbying group has contributed $125,000 to the committee, with the Missoula Organization of Realtors adding another $10,000. To put it in perspective, this is as much money as all five mayoral candidates have raised combined.

An independent expenditure of this magnitude is unheard of in municipal elections in Montana, and it threatens to overwhelm the voices of local Missoula residents. No matter who you support for mayor, you should be concerned about this attack on democracy and our community by a powerful, special interest.

It’s bad enough that a national organization is trying to pick our next mayor. Even more insidiously, the real estate lobby groups are doing so behind this shell committee they created that conceals the extent of their involvement. Take the “Nugent for Mayor” billboard on Orange Street. When we drive by, we see (if we can even read the fine print) that it was paid for by the vaguely-named “Missoula Mayor.” But without searching through filings in a state database, we would never know that Missoula Mayor is actually a front for the real estate lobby, or that its officers are staff and board of Missoula Organization of Realtors—the local chapter of the national group.

This is a classic example of what has become known as “dark money.” The realtors apparently want to hide their electioneering activity in support of Nugent from Missoula voters. Why? We don’t know that either, but it’s logical to assume that anyone spending this kind of money on a local election expects to gain something if and when their candidate wins.

The National Association of Realtors spent $81 million lobbying last year, making it the largest lobby group in the U.S. In 2010, they spent more than a million dollars in Montana on a successful ballot initiative campaign to ban real estate transfer taxes—a commonly-used funding source for affordable housing. More recently, the Association is under a multi-billion-dollar class-action lawsuit for its rules that artificially inflate home sales commissions paid by sellers.

Dark money from deep-pocketed, powerful industry groups like this is extremely damaging to democracy. As in this case, the amounts spent often dwarf what candidates can raise and what local citizens can afford to donate, effectively drowning out local voices. Elections dominated by big money results in an increasingly-cynical electorate and declines in voter participation, as the public comes to believe that their voices do not matter.

And that’s not just bad for democracy, but for us as community.

Derek Goldman lives in Missoula and has 18 years of public interest campaign experience in Montana, including work on campaign finance reform.

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[1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2023/08/05/why-i-filed-a-campaign-finance-complaint-against-the-realtors-pac-in-missoula/

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