Gay rights group alleges 'network of deception'

Equality Cincinnati, the gay rights group born in the aftermath of last year's gay rights campaign, said today it will file a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission over the failure of conservative activists to disclose who contributed $2.4 million to two campaigns opposing gay rights.

In what was the most expensive issue campaign in Cincinnati history, Citizens for Community Values spent $1.2 million last year in its attempt to keep Article XII in the city's charter. The 1993 charter amendment barred City Council from passing gay rights ordinance until it was repealed last year. Another $1.2 million went to support state Issue 1, the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

The following is the text of Equality Cincinnati Chairman Gary Wright's speech this morning at the Vernon Manor Hotel, where he and former Cincinnati Mayor Bobbie Sterne announced their complaint:

We are joining forces today to file a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission against Phil Burress, CCV Action, and other political organizations who have been violating Ohio law by hiding millions of dollars in campaign contributions.

In two issue campaigns in Ohio last November, CCV, CCV Action, and a network of ultraconservative political organizations raised and spent $2.4 million dollars, but disclosed only $13,000 in donations by individuals and non-political organizations. They then falsely claimed that the law did not require them to disclose who their real donors were at all.

We are filing this complaint because we believe Cincinnatians and Ohioans deserve to know the truth about who is paying millions of dollars for ads to sway their votes. Burress and others seem to believe that they are above the law. Proving them wrong is important to the future of fair, honest and legal elections in our state....

Now let's look at the facts. Our law states very clearly that:

• Any person or organization can contribute to an issue campaign, but they must disclose who they are;
  
  
• No person or organization can make a donation for another person so that the real donor can hide; and
  
  
• If the main purpose of an organization is political it must disclose its donors.
  

We've copied for you the relevant sections of the law that CCV Action and their political allies violated, and of course there is more detail in the filing itself. What CCV and their allies did last year is illegal in Ohio.

At least one of the organizations named in our complaint, Equal Rights No Special Rights, raised and spent so little money on its own, that it seems to have been set up only as a front for CCV Action and Family Research Council Action, which raised the money, hid the donors, and must have made all the real decisions.

For proof of the intent to deceive, you need go no farther than the October 28th, 2004 edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer, where Mr. Burress says he is out soliciting a big money donor in Tennessee who wants to remain anonymous. That's clearly against the law.

Seventy-five percent of the $1.26 million for the Cincinnati campaign was raised and spent not by the campaign itself but by two other political organizations. The campaign organization, Equal Rights No Special Rights, lists individual contributions of just $370 from four people, only two of whom actually lived in the city. They disclosed, in other words, just three pennies of every $100 spent on the campaign. Where did all that money really come from? Who really ran that campaign? What did Equal Rights No Special Rights really do?

The Chair of Equal Rights No Special Rights, Sam Malone, is a public official and should have known that what Equal Rights No Special Rights was doing was wrong. The people with the money at CCV Action may have actually been running that campaign, but that's no excuse. It is the duty of our elected officials to stand up for fair, honest, and legal campaigns, and Mr. Malone failed miserably in that.

These organizations also set up websites that allowed people to contribute anonymously on-line, again a clear violation of the law. We have documentation of all of that.

What we have here is a network of deception with CCV Action at its hub. That should be a concern to all who believe that elections should be fair, honest, and legal. We have disclosure laws because allowing hidden money in politics opens the door to corruption. Transparency is the only way to prevent hidden interests from taking over the people's government. That's why these laws need to be respected and enforced.

We believe that most of the average donors to CCV's campaigns are honest people who trusted CCV to follow election laws. We may disagree on the issues but I think we all would agree that fair, honest, and legal campaigns are important for democracy.

Big money donors are more likely to have known what was really going on behind closed doors. In fact, this whole system of deception may have been set up just to satisfy a few people with a lot of money pursuing a hidden agenda. We just don't know and won'tt know until those donors are disclosed as the law requires.

No matter how controversial the issue is, our future as a democratic society requires that we conduct every debate fairly, honestly, and legally. By filing this complaint today, we are hoping to help guarantee that future. No one wins when some people think that the law does not apply to them, and the rest of us remain silent.