Sometimes the scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal.
And the Small Business Action Committee, in putting up an ad attacking California Attorney General and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jerry Brown, is following the law. (Full disclosure: I'm contributor to the web site Fox & Hounds Daily, which is sponsored by SBAC and edited by SBAC president Joel Fox).
The term of art for such an ad is "issue advocacy" since the ad does not say directly you should vote against Brown. The ad instead asks people to contact Brown and tell him to be more supportive of jobs. Protected by this fig leaf, the Small Business Action Committee does not have to disclose the source of the reported $1.6 million it is spending on the ad.
SBAC could do the right thing and disclose to the public who is behind this clear attempt to influence an election, but a spokeswoman for the committee told me Monday afternoon that she wouldn't. She allowed only that the money comes from small businesses and large businesses, and that those businesses are all from California.
Voters deserve to know who those donors are. First, it's important to know who is behind a particular candidacy -- in this case Whitman's -- and who is against another -- in this case Brown -- when you're deciding for whom to vote. Perhaps more important, if Whitman wins, it's important to know who provided financial support for her victory as a check on whether she uses her official power as governor to reward such people.
The lack of disclosure isn't the only problem with the ad.
Not only does it adopt words and messages that fit neatly with Republican nominee Meg Whitman's own attacks on Brown. But it repeats what has been perhaps Whitman's most misleading attack on Brown: that he turned a budget surplus into a deficit during his first governorship.
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In fact, Prop 13 -- which Whitman and the backers of SBAC say they support -- turned that surplus into a deficit. Brown opposed Prop 13 until it passed, when he declared himself its champion. To say you're for Prop 13 in one place while criticizing a governor for its effects doesn't pass the smell test.
Neither does this ad.
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