On Politics / David Postman
Exposure worries donors

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It used to be Freedom Socialist Party members who worried that their political views would make them targets of harassment or even violence.

Now backers of John Kerry are scared, too.

Advances in technology have made it easy to find out the political leanings of anyone who donates money to a political candidate or cause. A few clicks on the Internet are all it takes to find campaign-finance information that once was seen mostly by government watchdogs and investigative reporters.

The free flow of information makes it easier than ever to track down who is paying for America's campaigns. Disclosure is a linchpin of our post-Watergate political system.

But it's making some donors uncomfortable.

Candidates of the state Freedom Socialist Party have fought for years to be exempted from state and local laws requiring disclosure of their campaign financiers. Party members argued that their politics made them the target of sometimes violent threats.

The state Public Disclosure Commission has granted the party exemptions in 1991 and 1998, recognizing that Socialists, as staff members said in one decision, have been victims of "a long history of harassment, disruptive efforts by individuals and government agencies, government surveillance" as well as threats of violence.

Seattle's Ethics and Elections Commission has been less willing to protect the names of Socialist donors. Last year it rejected a request from City Council candidate Linda Averill that she be allowed to conceal contributor's names.

Averill sued. And in August, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik issued a temporary injunction to allow Averill to keep coded fund-raising records to conceal names of her donors.

That case is awaiting trial.
 
But what about backers of more mainstream parties?

The New York Times wrote this week about people unhappy that their donation records were so easily accessible on public Web sites. A Kerry backer worried about being the target of vandalism in her heavily Republican neighborhood. And a donor to Howard Dean's campaign was reported to have complained to the Federal Elections Commission that it was a violation of his civil rights and the information could be used by a potential employer to blackball him.

In 1992, the chairman of the state Republican Party said that if Socialist donors were protected, he wanted the same for his financiers in the business world who could face harassment or a boycott.

Isn't politics supposed to be a public event in America?

The U.S. Supreme Court has said so. In a landmark case in 1976, the court said full disclosure of how campaign money is raised and spent can help put a candidate "in the political spectrum more precisely than is often possible solely on the basis of party labels and campaign speeches."

It's taken a long time for technology to bring true disclosure to campaign-finance information. It's easy, free and timely, as information is meant to be.

Check whom your neighbors are giving to at Fundrace.org, opensecrets.org, PoliticalMoneyLine.com, www.fec.gov and www.pdc.wa.gov.

Comments: 360-943-9882 or onpolitics@seattletimes.com