How the Citizens United Decision Changed U.S. Political Campaigns (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

Summary

Highlights

• The Citizens United ruling enables unlimited corporate and union spending in elections, causing major shifts in campaign finance dynamics. 🏛️💰
• Montana’s legacy of strong campaign finance laws was challenged by the influx of outside money post-Citizens United. 📜🏔️
• Investigations reveal attempts to manipulate regulations, with groups using P.O. boxes and elaborate schemes to funnel money into campaigns. 📬🔍
• The documentary details how such shadowy spending affects local elections more significantly due to less scrutiny compared to federal races. 🌍🔍
• Key figures include Jim Bopp, the lawyer behind Citizens United, who argues for the benefits of political spending and anonymity. 🧑‍⚖️💬

Key Takeaways

• Citizens United allowed unlimited spending by corporations and unions in politics, transforming the campaigning landscape. 🏢💸
• This decision led to a stealthy wave of political advertisements masked as issue advocacy, skirting around donor disclosure. 🎭📺
• Montana, a state with a strong anti-corruption past, became a battleground highlighting the confusion and controversy surrounding anonymous donations. 🏔️⚖️
• Wealthy outside groups can now essentially outspend candidates, directing the narrative and influencing elections without accountability. 💼🗳️
• The documentary reveals how certain groups navigate legal loopholes to influence politics extensively under the guise of independent spending. 🔍🗂️

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Overview The chapter discusses the unexpected focus on campaign finance in Montana, highlighting how the state has become a significant battleground. It explores the increase in political ads, spending, and negativity in the state's elections, with an emphasis on the lack of transparency regarding the sources of this funding. The chapter also examines the influence of external groups on the political message, in collaboration with American Public Media's Marketplace and Frontline's Big Money 2012 initiative. This initiative investigates the impact of the Supreme Court's decisions on election financing.
• 01:30 - 06:30: The Citizens United Case The chapter discusses the influence of corporations and big money in the democratic process, suggesting that what some perceive as corruption is, in fact, a necessary part of the process. There is a debate about the impact on democracy, with the suggestion that it's not a significant concern except for some left-wing groups. Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace presents evidence of the influence of external interest groups on political campaigns, highlighted by the discovery of numerous documents and candidate signatures sent to a group called Western Traditional Partnerships.
• 06:30 - 12:00: Impact on Montana Elections The chapter titled 'Impact on Montana Elections' discusses how significant financial involvement is influencing political landscapes across various states in America, emphasizing Montana. The discussion hints at investigative grounds for unearthing the implications of undisclosed funds in politics. The segment stresses the urgent need to halt exorbitant spending by the government, suggesting corporate taxation as a potential solution. The overarching theme reflects on the gravity of financial influence on America's political future.
• 12:00 - 18:00: Tracking Political Ads and Funding The chapter begins by discussing the financial burden of political advertising in America, emphasizing that the American Future Fund is behind the content of a particular ad. The narrative quickly shifts to a personal account involving attorney Alan Schwartz. The author finds themselves driving through the dark streets of Denver with Schwartz, hinting at an unusual story regarding campaign finance. The chapter sets the stage for an exploration into the unexpected aspects and experiences related to political funding and advertisement, beginning with an incident from early January 2011 involving Schwartz and his wife.
• 18:00 - 24:00: The Role of External Groups and 501(c)4s The chapter discusses the situation where a recently re-elected Colorado State Senator receives an anonymous email. The email's sender claims to have information about attack ads targeting the Senator's wife and offers to share documents related to the external group behind these ads. A week later, the anonymous individual contacts the Senator again, insisting that he needs to retrieve the documents to learn more about the group's actions.
• 24:00 - 33:00: Reactions and Historical Context The chapter titled 'Reactions and Historical Context' introduces a key event involving a person named Schwartz who agreed to meet someone claiming to have important documents hidden in a safe house. The journey took about half an hour, driving from Denver to Littleton. During the drive, Schwartz learned about Mark Seibel, a man with a criminal background who had a history of living on the streets.
• 33:00 - 48:00: Investigating WTP and Legal Challenges In this chapter, the narrative unfolds in a suburban area near Denver, where the protagonist describes an intriguing discovery. They recount finding buckets full of documents under mysterious circumstances — specifically, documents allegedly retrieved by a friend from a stolen car. These papers bear the repeated name of a particular politician, raising suspicions and curiosity. The documents are peculiar, with annotations like arrows and instructions 'use this one,' indicating a potential plot or scheme involving cut-and-paste methods. The protagonist, struck by the oddity and potential significance, takes pictures of the documents, hinting at further investigation and confronting legal challenges surrounding the material’s origins and purpose.
• 48:00 - 52:00: Conclusion and Future Implications In this chapter, the narrator reflects on an unusual situation involving mailers that had been transported mysteriously from Montana to their current location via different P.O. boxes. The narrator found the entire scenario to be odd and peculiar, contributing to a strange story narrated by someone named Mark. There were implications of something being amiss, and the chapter hints at a broader narrative involving a house and a mysterious gentleman who was residing there.

How the Citizens United Decision Changed U.S. Political Campaigns (full documentary) | FRONTLINE Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] tonight on front line Montana the surprising Battleground over campaign Finance somebody is buying the state out more ads more spending more negativity we're not seeing where the money's coming from look who's controlling the message it's these outside groups in collaboration with American public media's Marketplace Frontline investigates money and politics with the groundbreaking big money 2012 initiative the Supreme Court put elections in the
• 00:30 - 01:00 hands of Corporations and big money it doesn't corrupt the process if necessary for the process what does that say about democracy it says that this is completely irrelevant information that only some left-wing nut jobs care about marketplaces Kai Ryssdal uncovers startling new evidence of outside interest groups influence on campaigns I found these buckets of documents we have boxes and folders full of candidate signatures being faxed to Western traditional Partnerships I'm literally
• 01:00 - 01:30 not going to comment on it I would say we had grounds to proceed with an investigation and put people under oath how secret big money is changing American politics state by state tonight on Frontline Big Sky big money [Music] it's time to send a message to Washington stop spending money we don't have how can we afford this tax corporations what's at stake is the future
• 01:30 - 02:00 it costs us it taxes us too much American future fund is responsible for the content of this average [Music] I knew right away this wasn't gonna be the usual story on campaign Finance one of the first surprises was finding myself driving the dark streets of Denver with attorney Alan Schwartz who shared kind of a strange experience it was early January of 2011 and my wife
• 02:00 - 02:30 who had just been re-elected at the Colorado State Senate got an email from someone who claimed to have some information about a group that had sent out some attack ads against my wife the guy said he had some documents and a week later I heard from this individual again still not identifying himself but telling me that if I wanted to see the documents then I needed to get them that
• 02:30 - 03:00 day had to be that had to be that day Schwartz agreed to meet the guy who said the documents were stashed in a safe house that he would take him to I didn't know where we were going for the half hour that we drove from Denver to Littleton he told me his story Market Seibel Seibel right Simon yes there we go um basically uh everybody the man with the documents was Mark Seibel a convicted felon who'd spent most of his life living on the streets one night while staying at a known drug
• 03:00 - 03:30 house near Denver I found these buckets um of documents documents he says a friend found in a stolen car I found pages and pages of like a particular politician's name like you know would be written you know like 20 times on a piece of paper and then there was like then there'd be one that was cut out and an arrow pointing to it and say use this one you know a lot of cut and paste things going on I took pictures of all
• 03:30 - 04:00 the mailers laid out I took pictures of kind of group things into categories somebody had transported them from Montana to here it was P.O box to P.O box um it was just something wasn't right about him it was a very weird story that Mark was telling me everything about it was was odd and peculiar [Music] so listen to the house this is the house gentleman who was living here who was
• 04:00 - 04:30 keeping the documents opened the door he was blind he reaches out though and he grabs him by the arm yeah and he pulls me into the house and uh I immediately see that there are several boxes four or five very large containers on the floor I could tell that law enforcement would find them very important and interesting and I was determined to get them in the right place as quickly as I could the boxes did turn out to be both interesting and important
• 04:30 - 05:00 and they eventually ended up in the right place here with the commissioner of political practices in Helena Montana but that's a story of Secrets and money and politics that we'll come back to first I need to tell you what's been going on in Montana's elections [Music] I got to Butte on the 4th of July on the surface there was the usual hoopla fanfare
• 05:00 - 05:30 marching bands flag twirlers Shriners mermaids and of course politicians of every strike Pat Noonan he's my son but there's something different about this year's campaign there are new hidden forces at work nowhere is this more evident than in a barn burner of a race that may well decide which party controls the U.S Senate with the stakes so high this race is
• 05:30 - 06:00 attracting big money from lots of outside groups the incumbent fighting to hold on to his seat is Democrat John tester and he says he's not happy about all this outside money we're going to see a ton of money spent in Montana we're seeing money earlier more of it and uh and with more regularity and I think we're in a process right now of building a campaign infrastructure that's going to be very difficult to pull down as time goes on it's getting
• 06:00 - 06:30 to be a big big big money big money is at the heart of this story two years ago the Supreme Court changed the landscape of campaign Finance with a controversial decision in a case called citizens united corporations and unions spend unlimited amounts of money in campaigns but to avoid corruption the courts of the money can't go directly to candidates it has to go to Independent outside groups the
• 06:30 - 07:00 key word here being independent one supporter of citizens united is tester's opponent later six-term Republican Congressman Denny Rieber 's free speech then you better believe in political Free Speech what's what's more important in this country than political free speech because it's what guides us is what it allows us the opportunity to govern
• 07:00 - 07:30 ourselves over a thousand have left limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan but Congressman reberg voted against additional critical it's not hard to find political free speech in Montana today you see it all the time in what seems to be an endless run of political attack ends and raise the debt limits and the amount of money being spent is amazing it could be 20 million dollars on broadcast television how do you like them apples in the state
• 07:30 - 08:00 of Montana so long as I know where the apples are coming from I'm all right that's the question I don't know where the apples are coming from right we don't know where the apples are coming from and that's the problem here David Parker is a professor at Montana State University he's been tracking the TV ad spending in this Senate race it is incredibly difficult to actually figure out where this money is coming into this state and then let alone to figure actually who's actually giving the money Parker's research shows that a lot of new groups had gotten into the Montana
• 08:00 - 08:30 Senate race this summer so you've been out at every television station in this state right nearly yes almost ask for the record deal you looked it up you added up all the money what do we know about where that money's coming from well yeah 6.8 million dollars was spent on broadcast television right in the senate race through June about 68 money comes from outside groups 68 percent that's amazing you know that's not the political parties that's not the tester and that's not rebirth but that's outside groups he was the deciding vote
• 08:30 - 09:00 of vote Parker thinks that matters overwhelmingly it's not the candidates themselves who are actually running for this officer basically telling their stories is not even their parties here within the state it's these outside groups they're calling the shots in terms of what's being talked about in this race more so than the candidates that's the problem tell Congressman reberg government fences and drones are wrong for Montana so who are all these outside groups calling the shots
• 09:00 - 09:30 definitely call the War Room got it to find out I had to go all the way to Washington DC where I was taken inside one of the Democrats key super Pacs American Bridge 21st century this looks for all the world like a bunch of kids sitting around surfing the web uh for the most part yeah but they are very smart uh kids and uh they know what they're looking for Rodell molyneux the president of American Bridge showed me around tell me what these guys are doing it was a rare look at the world of outside groups American Bridge was the
• 09:30 - 10:00 only Super PAC in fact it led us in to see what they do some of these people are video Specialists some of them are researchers it had the look and the feel of a candidate's campaign but they actually can't work with candidates they have to be independent we don't coordinate with candidates we can't coordinate with candidates that's against the law what makes this Super PAC stand out is that it specializes in opposition research these are the people who come up with the research that
• 10:00 - 10:30 you're going to find in the direct mail piece in the 32nd ad in the online ad that happens here what also happens is this you see that video footage there it comes from this guy he's a Tracker he works for American Bridge he's one of 19 trackers they have out in the field following Republican candidates we're looking for inconsistencies everyone that's working on a specific candidate knows this candidate inside and out if the person flips up if the person says X instead of Y if there's a flip-flop we
• 10:30 - 11:00 know about it then from there it's a decision of what we decide to do with that video in their meetings in the mornings the staff reviews their top campaign priorities like the senate race in Montana John McCain is heading to Montana and they carefully plot strategy to help shape the message for voters so we can sort of highlight McCain's hypocrisy for campaigning with reberg because McCain is such a fiscal Hawk and Denny's such a big spender obviously being a member of
• 11:00 - 11:30 the approach committee yeah it's not nearly as sexy as I think some people would want it to be cool boom that's it thanks us now this is mostly public information you just need to know where to look at it uh and what you do is you put together the political history of a candidate every vote that they've ever taken every political statement that they hadn't made any contradictions that you might find business dealings that they might have uh that they might have had before being in a Congress or even business dealings they had while they
• 11:30 - 12:00 were in Congress I'll never support nor take here's where their research pays off they share it with other outside groups who then make ads that show up in Montana ads like this one made by a group called citizens for strength and Security fund Dennis reberg build taxpayers over a hundred thousand dollars to lease an SUV this ad is like so many others that have been running this year it's hard hitting and negative himself thousands more per year at our
• 12:00 - 12:30 expense also it represents a growing Trend in campaign Finance secretive outside groups that are trying to influence elections we need a balanced approach not pay raises and Perks at Wesleyan University I found Professor Erica Franklin found she's made a specialty of studying these kinds of ads so I asked her how citizens united has changed things citizens united case and a couple recent decisions just prior to that have led to a more relaxed atmosphere in which
• 12:30 - 13:00 outside groups can do just about anything that they want to do in terms of political advertising spending what's job killer John hickenlooper's plan for Colorado one of the most visible consequences of this new atmosphere has been the explosive growth of ads made by tax-exempt non-profits known as 501 C4s they're different from the super Pacs that we've all heard so much about super Pacs have to tell us where they get their money but the 501c force 501c4s are not required to disclose
• 13:00 - 13:30 their donors and there are ways in which they can get around having to do so so there are certain advantages and strategic actors are maybe more likely to want to funnel their funds through a 501c4 than they might be other types of of outside organization strategic actors strategic actors help me understand yeah so if if I want to contribute money to that is intended to be benefit a particular candidate or a particular
• 13:30 - 14:00 political party but I don't want that money Trail to come back to me I'm going to choose a different way to give money than I might otherwise so that would be a 501c4 right which doesn't have to disclose its donors exactly it's time to send a message to Washington stop turns out 501c force can keep their money Trail hidden by talking about issues by saying that issues are their primary purpose not the election or defeat of a
• 14:00 - 14:30 particular candidate how am I supposed to know though as a reasonably intelligent voter what's an issue ad and what's a direct campaign to vote for this guy because you look at them and they look the same they look almost exactly the same so how do I know so the key difference or at least what outside groups have been falling back on as the key difference are the use of magic words I love that magic words magic word
• 14:30 - 15:00 that's not your invention though where did that come from no so that comes from a footnote in a Supreme Court decision from the 1970s in which the court speculated about the types of words that might most uh set apart election ads from Pure issue ads that footnote it's right here number 52 use these magic words vote for vote against elect defeat and you've clearly got a campaign in avoid the magic words and some outside groups argue you have
• 15:00 - 15:30 an issue ad yes sometimes that distinction is hard to see all right so help me out show me because I watch a lot of political ads and you can't really tell all right I asked Valor to walk me through a 501c4 ad like the one that's playing in Montana from citizens for strength and Security fund one of the wealthiest members of Congress a multi-millionaire Dennis reberg billed taxpayers over a hundred thousand dollars to lease an SUV all right what is yes anti-reburg but what
• 15:30 - 16:00 does this have to do with the issue what's what's the so they actually haven't gotten to it yet okay we're we're a third of a way through we're halfway through a 30-second ad Reaper promised he'd never support or take a pay raise then voted five times all right wait a minute they don't like the SUVs they don't like the pay raise they don't like the SUVs again I'm still waiting for that issue then voted five times to raise his own pay giving himself thousands more per year at our expense to cut the deficit no Congressman rebook
• 16:00 - 16:30 cut the waste first we need a balanced approach deficit right that's not the deficit cut the deficit so they didn't say vote for they didn't say reberg or tested for congress but they did say the word deficit they did say the word bang that's an issue it that's an issue ad okay really by the magic word test that would be an issue advocacy act now you and I both know that this ad is aired during election cycle right and is intended to
• 16:30 - 17:00 help Jon Tester I wanted to know more about the group that made this ad because you can't tell much from its name citizens for strength and Security fund so I went to their website and here's what I learned they're a 501c4 social welfare group there are issues advocacy group they tell me that a couple of times but that's it there's no people listed there's no address listed there's no phone number listed they make it really hard to find out who they are
• 17:00 - 17:30 only way we know who they are and where they are is one piece of paper it's a it's a thing from a media purchase and it lists some of the corporate officers and then it gives the street address citizens for strength and Security fund it's 1718 M Street Northwest Washington DC this is M Street 1708 it's on the left [Music] uh which I don't understand all right
• 17:30 - 18:00 I'm gonna go figure out what's going on Sir could you just wait one sec thank you oh all right you know where it is I know exactly here's what it is it's a box right has to be one one five one one five so citizens for strength and Security fund lives right here at this address since there was nobody home I went back
• 18:00 - 18:30 to American Bridge the Super PAC that does research for these 501c4 ads we actually uh try to get a hold of them went to their website can't find anything we did track down an address which as it turns out is here in Washington DC it's uh it's not far from here actually it's uh over on M Street 1718 M Street which as it turns out as a UPS store and you go in and they've rented a mailbox there
• 18:30 - 19:00 so I'm just trying to find the connection between the information you guys find and provide to groups like citizens for strength and Security fund which does not have to disclose its donors and who when I try to go find them I pull up in front of a UPS store doesn't that kind of make you go wait what no actually it doesn't and the reason why is so listen if it was up to me I wouldn't be doing this uh there are a lot of other things I'd rather be doing um but I do believe in my Democratic
• 19:00 - 19:30 candidates and I believe in Democratic causes and I could play by one set of rules I could play by the set of rules that says we're going to do it like this because this is the way that we want it to want to do it and watch us lose even more seats in 2012 or I can fight and try to help elect as many Democrats as possible and in doing so I'm gonna play with the rules that we're given today and if the rules were different I'd play with those roles so so for you for now
• 19:30 - 20:00 in this election cycle secrecy uh and non-disclosure and uh obscure sources of money are okay I'm gonna play with the roles that are giving me yes [Music] if some see playing by the rules as a necessary evil the man arguably most responsible for those rules is convinced
• 20:00 - 20:30 they're indispensable to democracy his name is Jim ba he's best known as the father of citizens united he's been a leading force in the restructuring of campaign Finance law I caught up with him at his office in Terre Haute Indiana and he told me why he believes secrecy is actually good for the political process for people to participate in our democracy citizens they have to be able to talk about issues and it's very important that that be protected and the First Amendment intended that that be protected if they
• 20:30 - 21:00 can't talk about issues because they're afraid that the Federal Election Commission is going to investigate them or they're going to be complained about or they're going to have to file a report or they're going to have to do this and do that then they are driven out of our democracy Bob says disclosure laws keep people from participating in politics anonymity for Citizens is very important concept because people are very reticent to contribute to overtly political entities associating yourself with political
• 21:00 - 21:30 causes is much more controversial than giving you the local hospital conservative political causes have been in his blood for a long time Bob got his start with the right to life movement in the 1970s and he says he quickly learned an important lesson campaign Finance laws were keeping conservative groups from getting their message out so to defend them and to make sure that they can be effective means opposing those laws over the past 30 years jimbop has
• 21:30 - 22:00 challenged more than 150 campaign Finance laws he's won some of the biggest cases in the country campaign Finance laws do don't do anything for citizens other than stifle and limit them the average voter could care less who's quote funding a politician or a of course do you think people should care about where this money is coming from generally no because it's the message you know you either buy buy the argument or don't buy the argument
• 22:00 - 22:30 generally no it doesn't matter truth doesn't change because who's funding it John Greg is either a pro-life or not what difference does it make who's funding that should citizens in this country be able to to find that information should they be able to learn who's funding not generally they don't care that that's not the question just because they don't care doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to know right no uh well then I'm sorry well then are you just patronizing them
• 22:30 - 23:00 no you know that they uh you know you're so sorry you ignorant Hoosiers no that you should no you should want to know this well actually Mr Bob you care less you're the one because it's not relevant to them what does that say about democracy though it says that this is completely irrelevant information that only some left-wing nut jobs care about that's the bottom line [Music]
• 23:00 - 23:30 I wanted to find out what the folks in Montana thought of that you don't need to spend a lot of time here to find people who are independent-minded and people who are concerned we don't need secrecy and we don't need all this additional money coming in and coming in secretly no I feel like somebody is buying the state out the people of the state don't have control
• 23:30 - 24:00 of of what's going on and I think that's absolutely wrong well it's our it's our state we don't have to be told by people from all over the country what to do we we can handle it this aversion to outside money and influence has deep roots in this state it goes back to the late 1800s [Music] the Gilded Age when the minds of Montana were turning copper into gold for the
• 24:00 - 24:30 great industrialists of that era all right so this is the William Clark mansion which kind of gets you to the question of who was William Clark local political reporter Chuck Johnson told me about William Clark he was one of the wealthiest men in America he got most of his money from copper mining he bought a railroad he had other businesses he also bought himself a seat in the U.S Senate uh how he bribed state legislators in
• 24:30 - 25:00 those days legislators picked the U.S senators not the voters are we talking bags of cash legislative yeah and that was all undisclosed cash right well it got it or did or did people know where it was coming from do you know where it was coming from the envelopes had his initials on it no yeah yeah that's that's just gutsy that's right what happens though back here in Montana after all that well among other things the people adopt an initiative called the Corrupt Practices Act in 1912
• 25:00 - 25:30 and this is in direct reaction to the to the corruption in the political system it banned corporations from giving money money to campaigns and it also required disclosure who gave to campaigns right William Clark you might say he's the first Super PAC [Music] thank you the state of Montana kept its ban on corporate campaign spending for a hundred years and in the process it built up some of the toughest campaign Finance laws in the country
• 25:30 - 26:00 but of course there were people who didn't agree with the laws and wanted to get around them one such effort came to light four years ago to find out what happened I went to meet a man on pothole Drive we're we're the biggest in the area John Ward owns Little John's Septic Service on the outskirts of Helena and he's a republican he's a Navy veteran he'd been elected to the Montana legislature in 2004. this District actually encompasses this side of the Valley
• 26:00 - 26:30 North he showed me around and he told me about the surprise he ran into during his 2008 campaign I have opposition but I had no except whatsoever of the the power and and viciousness in the Republican primary that year Ward faced a conservative Challenger with little political experience a guy named Mike Miller he wasn't a good campaigner he was afraid of people you know and he wouldn't appear at places and then just
• 26:30 - 27:00 days before the primary Ward's District was glitched with mailers from a bunch of outside groups attacking him here it is wow John Ward voted with criminal coddling liberal activists our high energy prices killing you John Ward had a choice instead you raised their taxes Mothers Against Child predators sort of certified to be true and accurate well yeah you can say anything you want so these went out a week before the
• 27:00 - 27:30 election less than that within the last four days you have no time to respond that way see Ward lost that primer to Mike Miller by just 24 votes one of the biggest Shockers of the primary election that year because he was a thought to be a in safe shape politically a Conservative Republican but got got picked off by these groups the impact of of receiving these graphic uh things right before you went to the polls it was very very effective
• 27:30 - 28:00 John Ward wasn't alone these kinds of Flyers started to show up in mailboxes all across Montana in 2008. it was something new the tone and the tactics rubbed some people the wrong way and a complaint was filed that soon led to an investigation what nobody can foresee though was that these mailers were about to start a fight that in time would go all the way to the U.S Supreme Court and actually challenge citizens united they cut our attention because of the
• 28:00 - 28:30 unusual R yeah Dennis unsworth was the commissioner of political practices the agency responsible for enforcing Montana's campaign finances these groups or names that we hadn't heard his job was to figure out who was behind the mailers and whether somebody was violating Montana's strict anti-corruption laws it's not clear where they come from we've got two different organizations named here this one included a Bozeman address I believe on one there was a Colorado address and
• 28:30 - 29:00 it just wasn't clear where this information was coming from and so just as initial step I sent him a letter to this group Western tradition partnership yes [Music] Western tradition partnership or wtp as it's known is a 501c4 issue group that popped up in Montana four years ago it bills itself as hard-hitting and pro-growth the vertical environmentalists have their way I'll be taking cold showers in the dark that's why I joined Western tradition its
• 29:00 - 29:30 stated goal is advancing reasonable resource development it's stated Target is radical environmentalists I kid and I approve this message so what unsworth wanted to know was whether wtp had crossed the line from issues advocacy into clear-cut campaign activities I wrote to Western tradition partnership with an address in in Colorado got a response back that said uh one we didn't have anything to do with this even though our name was on it but two
• 29:30 - 30:00 essentially this is none of your business and and so this does not come under your jurisdiction the primary purpose of wtp is not to engage in political campaigning Jim Brown is wtp's outside Council they're an issue advocacy group and they're allowed to engage in lobbying and as such they don't need to register their activities with the state of Montana but as unsworth dug deeper he began to suspect that the different groups on the mailers weren't really that different at all the
• 30:00 - 30:30 common denominator appeared to be a chap named Christian lafour Christian lafour had signed some of the paperwork his name appeared on some of the paperwork my name is Christian Laffer and I'm the creator of gettingonprofitstatus.com and the non-profit launch kit and I'm so lefur had come to Montana back in the mid-2000s to work on conservative causes he turned out eventually to be the director of strategy for wtp but when unsworth tried to learn more about lafer and wtp's activities he had
• 30:30 - 31:00 trouble getting answers until he got a big break we came across what I'd call a friendly witness someone who was directly involved appeared to have been directly involved in the activity uh who became dissatisfied and had some material some documents Carolyn londorf this is 7-3 Carolyn landorf was hired by Christian laferte to work for wtp in early 2010. she'd been a county
• 31:00 - 31:30 commissioner she was active in local Republican politics still rolling all right here we go well in the beginning I was kind of confused because I wasn't sure where they were heading I had some red flags that would come up and I just kind of playing it out trying to fill out where wtp really was things kind of secretive in ways and that bothered me I met lindorf at a cafe in Helena where we went over some of the documents that she had given to unsworth how long did it take to realize that something was it took a
• 31:30 - 32:00 good month but when I find out there's a PO boxes in Helena there's PO boxes in Livingston there's PO boxes in Bozeman there's P.O boxes in Denver there's PO boxes in Longmont that's not normal and then Lindor says she discovered what wtp was really all about um it wasn't until I went into the winter the Republican winter kickoff in 2010. when I found out a couple of my favorite legislators were on their hit list on their hit list and that bothered me so that is so this
• 32:00 - 32:30 is an issues group 501c4 with a Canada hit list correct and when I found out what wtp was really all about and if you don't vote the way that they wanted you to vote in the legislature or the county or the city they would be there to replace you I want to make sure I understand this this is a 501c4 social welfare group correct with specific candidates that it wanted to Target and recruiting specific candidates to promote its agenda correct
• 32:30 - 33:00 she showed me how they did it I want to flip to the last page wtp had a plan a plan to raise and spend more than a half a million dollars on Montana State races to make that happen they had a secret fundraising script for lendorf and others to use on prospective donors that script went like this you're a 501 C4 organization and corporate contributions are completely legal under this program and there's no limit on how much you can give and most important it's confidential we're not required to
• 33:00 - 33:30 report the name or the amount of any contribution that we receive so if you decide to support the program no politician nor bureaucrat or no radical environmentalists will ever know you help make this program possible you can just sit back on Election night and see what a difference you've made nobody's going to know please give us money correct those documents were all that Denison's worth needed to see they were offering to help people get involved in campaigns
• 33:30 - 34:00 Without Limits not disclosing who they are operating from the Shadows spending as much money as they wanted to spend to influence campaigns unregulated that's what it told me is Commissioner of political practices is that they were selling uh illegal practice essentially no bureaucrat and no radical environmentalist will ever know that you helped make this program possible you can just sit back on Election night and see what a difference you've made does that sound like campaign activity
• 34:00 - 34:30 to you uh all right however you want to characterize it the the statement's true because this is a part of a larger debate that's going on on the national level as you know that debate he's talking about is the old eight magic words defense by avoiding phrases like vote for and elect groups like wtp say they're not campaigning at all they're just talking about issues and it is permissible both under federal law and and most importantly under
• 34:30 - 35:00 constitutional principles First Amendment principles that if you engage in discussing issues you do not have to uh disclose who your donors are um and you do not have to register your activities with any commission or political practices or the FEC that argument didn't wash with Dennis unsworth a number of Courts have rejected that narrow eight magic words test and some States including Montana take a broader view of what defines campaign these are campaign materials
• 35:00 - 35:30 there is no question about their involvement in campaign activity absolutely no question the commissioner handed down a ruling in accusing WTOP of engaging in all sorts of wrongdoing uh in my opinion that was designed to basically punish the organization for engaging in First Amendment speech and so wtp didn't stand back and just take it basically they said oh all right if you're going to try to regulate us under unconstitutional laws then we're going
• 35:30 - 36:00 to challenge those laws and they did wtp sued to strike down Montana's 100 year old Corrupt Practices Act this was a case that you argued personally Steve Bullock is the state attorney general what does this case mean though for Montana specifically it was over a hundred years ago it was 1906 in a local newspaper that said the greatest living issue confronting us today is whether the corporation shall control the people or the people shall
• 36:00 - 36:30 control the corporations we did have a history of really corporate dominance in all of our electoral processes and montanans took it back it was average people that came together and said no we want to make sure that individuals are deciding who represent this and not large interests this is a western Traditions partnership versus attorney general state of Montana what the case turned into though was Montana openly challenging the U.S
• 36:30 - 37:00 Supreme Court over citizens united remember citizens allowed outside groups to spend unlimited amounts of money independent of candidates the court said outside spending does not corrupt Bullock disagreed independent expenditures would corrupt and we certainly have a history I mean the whole reason why the Corrupt Practices Act was passed by citizens initiative in 1912 was by because of corporate corruption some of the Montana justices
• 37:00 - 37:30 were skeptical on what legal basis could we simply ignore citizens united on the premise that Montana got it right and the Supreme Court got it wrong thank you we'll take this matter on the advisement this is the 10 o'clock news on Q2 what happened next it was kind of a surprise a Supreme Court is upholding a 1912 law stating corporations cannot spend money to influence elections Bullock had beaten back wtp
• 37:30 - 38:00 he won the case which wasn't supposed to happen States aren't supposed to contradict the U.S Supreme Court the Montana case was a direct challenge to the Supreme Court's ruling in citizens united it was unusual because it was a state supreme court saying you need to think about this again we think you've made a mistake at least as it affects our laws in Montana
• 38:00 - 38:30 there was of course one man who didn't think the court had made a mistake with citizens united he's got a different view of money in politics his money in politics inherently corrupt definitely not it doesn't corrupt the process it's necessary for the process to communicate you have to spend money so you have to have money to communicate the problem we have is we have we don't have enough information available to voters to to allow them to
• 38:30 - 39:00 make informed choices so we need more spending you think there's not enough information out there in American politics the majority of the people do not know who their congressman is or who their senators are so you think that's enough information no that's not enough information they need a lot more information Bob took the Montana case right to the U.S Supreme Court there was a lot on the line for both sides this to me was really about the last hundred years
• 39:00 - 39:30 and what kind of system we ended up developing but also the next hundred years it would take six months for the U.S Supreme Court to weigh in challenge to Citizens United they did so in a single paragraph Without a hearing refusing to reconsider citizens united Bob had won again the Supreme Court majority is not ready
• 39:30 - 40:00 I think to look at whether they were wrong about the potential for corruption by independent spending uh that's that's the immediate takeaway from Montana legal theories are one thing political realities are another which makes this the point where the story of wtp gets really interesting where we get back to the boxes from Colorado remember the boxes right the ones that were found in that crazy drug House in
• 40:00 - 40:30 Denver and sent out to Montana well this is where they came the commissioner of political practices this is Julie steeb true hey how are you good to see you nice to meet you turns out those boxes had some suspicious wtp files in them but they came five months after the state had finished its investigation into wtp they were mailed to me on solicited and they all relate to Western tradition partnership I think would investigator Julie Steve discovered inside the boxes
• 40:30 - 41:00 made her wonder whether wtp as an outside group was working directly with candidates in other words coordinating one file that caught my attention is one that's labeled wife letters in this folder when I first saw it I had no idea what it meant for example this first letter on top is from Pam Butcher and her husband Ed was a candidate in 2008. these wife letters were sent to voters just before election day okay wait hold
• 41:00 - 41:30 on Joanne Miller and Pam butcher in their signatures have the same handwrite wow but as you read into these things I mean look at this right Ed and I first met on a blind date this is Pam butcher first met on a blind date neither of us wanted that was arranged by one of his friends blah blah blah it was the fall of 1962. how does whoever wrote this assuming it's not Pam butcher know all that stuff the answer seemed to me in another folder it's called a wife questionnaire and it's filled out by Pam butcher how did
• 41:30 - 42:00 you and your husband meet and it says we met on a blind date on a blind date arranged by his buddy that neither of us wanted I was a freshman at eastern Montana college and it was his second year that was second year in Fall of 1962. we've got stag cities Stacks some are pink some are purple some are white some are blue if they're a wife questionnaires are there candidate questionnaires yes I did find those I believe there was one questionnaire that was full of detailed information about a candidate that wtp was backing
• 42:00 - 42:30 this one has what is a subject candidate questionnaire a lot more detailed than the wife questionnaire and look at this it's a questionnaire apparently filled out by Republican Mike Miller Mike Miller's the Challenger who narrowly beat John ward in the 2008 primary you remember War right he was the candidate on pothole Drive who was targeted by the attack mailers just days before the primer how much time will you be able to spend campaigning so this is wanting to know if we invest in you how much time
• 42:30 - 43:00 can you give us how much are we going to get out of here he has no previous appointed political positions political involvement basically none political fundraising experience none so what does this tell you all this you know none none none what does that mean well this information is important to me specifically because this is an inexperienced candidate who beat John Ward with no experience going into the campaign I'm looking for Mike Miller please I tried to talk to Mike Miller about the help he may have gotten from
• 43:00 - 43:30 wtp it'd be real important in this story to have your side of it but he wouldn't talk to us on camera all right sir thank you bye-bye right but we did find another candidate whose name also appeared in the files it's the guy who met his wife on a blind date Ed butcher we've gotten some boxes of documents full of wtp papers uh in which uh you and your wife have some files you
• 43:30 - 44:00 have some what have some files okay okay let me show you what I'm talking about so there's a there's a questionnaire here filled out by Pam butcher okay who's your wife yeah uh asking things like how did you and your husband meet how many kids do you have what are their names and ages what church do you attend so this is wtp working with your campaign uh not to my knowledge it was WTV working with your wife for sure it could have been Christian Christian my name is Christian
• 44:00 - 44:30 laferte as in Christian lafer from wtp it's very possible in that primary that when she was trying to write this letter that she could have very easily have run it by him he may have asked you need any help and she said yeah I need to get this family so it's very possible there could have been a little bit of that but as far as him being involved in the campaign to any degree I mean you know basically I was running the campaign well but but helping your wife and and helping do Communications with potential voters is not in your mind helping a campaign well it would be yeah yeah yeah
• 44:30 - 45:00 it would be I mean there could be some of that going on and here we have what I call the candidate signatures so um here we have Mike Miller from the John Ward race and it's it's clearly a photocopy right yeah um this is one from Wesley prouse and it actually was cut from this page which was faxed to Christian lafers the same thing same number yeah so this fits I believe and as I went through this it became
• 45:00 - 45:30 clear that these signatures are being pasted onto the candidate letters for example Mike Millers wasn't signed the signature matches exactly on the signed letter that was mailed out to voters version connect the dots for me then how does this work my guess as best as I can figure is wtp determines which candidates they want to support in the election who's going to promote their interests right they then have someone internally writing the wife letters they have someone internally generating the
• 45:30 - 46:00 candidate letters they get the signatures to put on the letters and they do mass mass mailings and the conclusion you draw is my opinion for what it's worth is that wtp was running a lot of these campaigns I wanted to get another opinion so I took the documents to Trevor Potter the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission so the question is what does this lead you to believe it would suggest if they're sending this questionnaire around to candidates and
• 46:00 - 46:30 then producing these letters that they have a direct role in these candidate Communications this is the sort of information that is in fact campaign strategy campaign plans that candidates cannot share with an outside group without making it coordinated and just to be clear that's a big No-No right you need to know more but certainly if I were back in my FEC
• 46:30 - 47:00 days as a commissioner I would say we had grounds to proceed with an investigation and put people under oath and show them these documents and ask where they came from and where they were makes you want to know more yes okay we contacted several individuals who are involved with wtp including Christian lafer hi I'm looking for Christian the third please it's Kyle risdoll from front lines it's Mr lafer none of them would give
• 47:00 - 47:30 Frontline an on-camera interview hello hello so I showed the documents to their outside Council we have boxes and folders full of candidate signatures being faxed to wtp and the question once you've had a chance to think about this for a second is why would these documents
• 47:30 - 48:00 appear to show campaign activity be included in boxes full of wtp materials the answer is that I've never seen this material before I don't know if this was found in wtp materials I'm not going to comment because I haven't reviewed any of that material I mean I'm not you know have materials sent you know given to me on surprise and then asked to comment I I don't know what they show or what they don't show I'm literally not going to comment on that you can rely on your other sources
• 48:00 - 48:30 for those until wtp answers the questions that these documents raise it's impossible to know exactly what the group has been up to but what's amazing is that this was the group that convinced the U.S Supreme Court it didn't need to take a second look at citizens united there's a little bit of irony right in in these documents being about wtp and wtp being the the group at the center of this case the Supreme Court case right because what the majority of the justices said is we don't have any
• 48:30 - 49:00 evidence that there's anything corrupting about independent spending we have no reason to change our mind based on the Montana case well it turns out maybe here you're looking at something that may in fact not be independent at all and this is exactly the sort of thing that people have been trying to argue to the Supreme Court that this so-called independent spending is not really independent all right something to tell you about Western tradition partnership they have
• 49:00 - 49:30 gone National and they've changed their name it's called American tradition partnership ATP and they have an office right here in Washington DC it is on Pennsylvania Avenue all right you gotta have a look at this it's just a P.O box ATP says they're working in more than a half a dozen states now and the way things are going they're going to have a lot of company what's the logical
• 49:30 - 50:00 extension of uh these issue advocacy groups the 501c4s not being regulated is there is there a finite natural conclusion yes there'll be more of them they'll be more active they will speak be able to speak more they'll have more money to speak does democracy did better does does our government does this country work better when that happens definitely the Supreme Court has sided with Jim Bob but it's not so clear-cut back here in
• 50:00 - 50:30 Montana where the real world of politics comes home the pothole drive and John Ward do you think the Supreme Court understands politics and and the actual mechanics of it well to a certain extent but not not in the nitty-gritty no I don't think they do I don't think they understand the realities of it I wouldn't say they're clueless but they they uh they certainly don't live in the same world as the rest of us
• 50:30 - 51:00 [Applause] it's a world where campaigns look a lot like this the Montana Senate race has become the most expensive in-state history more advertising than any Senate race in the country much of the money is coming from outside groups and much of that undisclosed the game that's being played here is how to spend money to affect elections without having to disclose where the
• 51:00 - 51:30 money is coming from foreign it's estimated that nine billion dollars will be spent on elections across the country this year the vast majority of those elections are going to be state and local and that is where citizens united May well have its greatest impact voters have far less information at these local elections there's a lot less money being spent on these elections already so if you have a big
• 51:30 - 52:00 gorilla come into town and drop a lot of cash let's say a hundred thousand two hundred thousand dollars in that race I think the effect there could be much more tremendous than at the federal level but how big an effect is hard to know because as we found out out in Big Sky country big money has a way of staying out of sight [Music]
• 52:00 - 52:30 for more on this and other Frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org
• 52:30 - 53:00 Frontline frontlines Big Sky big money is available on DVD to order visit shop pbs.org or call 1-800 play PBS Frontline is also available for download on iTunes
• 53:00 - 53:30 [Music]