The fate of a lawsuit hoping to shut down pro-Proposition 1 TV ads is in the hands of a Canyon County judge.
A Republican Party operative and three board members for Too Extreme for Idaho, which opposes restoring abortion rights in the state through the passage of Prop 1, filed their civil suit Tuesday morning.
“Every day that goes by there’s more irreparable harm to my clients,” said Lincoln Davis Wilson, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
They allege Idahoans United for Women and Families, the Idaho Democratic Party and its gubernatorial candidate, Terri Pickens, violated state campaign finance laws through a multistep scheme to receive cheaper ad rates.
Idahoans United donated $620,500 to the Idaho Democratic Party earlier in October, which then purchased the ad time from TV stations across the state through Pickens, who, like all political candidates, pays a cheaper rate than interest groups.
“The problem is the attempt to conceal the source. It’s been concealed from the station and it’s been concealed from the voters,” Wilson said.
“It means they’re able to have a force multiplier in the last weeks of the election,” because the campaign’s advertising dollars can stretch further, he said.
Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane’s office on Friday said it found the three entities violated no campaign finance reporting laws with the tactic.
Each transaction is publicly available to see in the state’s campaign finance database.
The office stood by that statement again on Tuesday, though it noted it had not completed a full investigation because no formal complaint related to a violation of campaign finance laws had been submitted.
Victor Miller, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, filed an updated complaint with the secretary of state’s office Thursday morning that has yet to be processed.
“They say they want a level playing field and they want the discounted rates. They can get them in the same lawful way that the defendants did,” said Jennifer Dempsey, an attorney representing the Idaho Democratic Party.
Instead, the lawsuit filed by the four plaintiffs is trying to “restrict the lawful political speech of each of the defendants here,” Dempsey said.
Idahoans United donated another $100,000 to the Idaho Democratic Party earlier this week, which Wilson said may be used for a similar, last-minute ad blitz just days ahead of the election on Tuesday.
Judge Davis VanderVelde presided over the case – first in Caldwell Thursday afternoon before granting a motion to change venues to Ada County.
VanderVelde said he’d render a decision in the case as soon as he could.
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