Senator Therriault's Floor Speech on Soft Money, 5/25/05

I move and ask unanimous consent that I be given the leave to address the body about shadow party activities.

Earlier this year we debated a bill that contained a provision that would have allowed political parties to use, with full disclosure, some limited what they call soft money. For the members soft money is anything that doesn't count as hard money, so its one of those definitions that sort of by default - if it's not hard money then its automatically soft money. And uh, unfortunately the spin on the issue got cast before real information got out, and the provision was ultimately dropped, and it was dropped with my approval as part of the conference committee.

But for those people who say we don't want soft money coming in to the state of Alaska, I just want to make sure that everybody understands that what we have happening right is money that is generated through what are called 527's which is a part of the internal revenue code, is flooding into the state of Alaska with no limitations on the sources, no limitations on the time it can be expended, so it can be expended right up to the date of the campaign, and who are these? On the national level it's called a shadow party, it's something that the McCain -Feingold legislation that passed in Congress that left the only 527's as the avenue of utilizing the soft money, so everybody has recast their activities as these 527's and created what is called the shadow parties.

Now let's talk a little bit about who the shadow party is - we've got Moveon.org, Center for American Progress, American Votes, Americans Coming Together... all 527 groups generating millions and millions of dollars, driving it right into the elections, no disclosure other than much after the fact disclosure to the IRS - and that again is no information available during the campaign itself. On a national level, let's see who the top contributors are... George and Susan Soros - 24 million dollars, Peter Lewis 23 - Million dollars, Steven Bane (?) -15 million, Jane Fonda - she's the fourth highest giver on the national level.

And during some of the debate in the Judiciary committee on the provision that was ultimately dropped - I spoke to an individual about Moveon.org, I talked about them as an example of these non-party parties, and he said "oh they're not here in Alaska, they're never going to come to Alaska, they're never going to pay attention to Alaska." So it's interesting when I went to the movie the other day - and this is happening all across the nation - Star Wars, knowing that people are buying advance tickets, that there were going to be big lines outside the theater - they have groups going and handing out flyers. All the theaters across the nation, and who is it? Moveon.pac. So this money is flooding right into the state of Alaska, again, very little disclosure. And, if you think that you have somehow protected soft money from coming into Alaska Politics, it not happened. You just assured that it's done in a method that has no disclosure.

We go back to a couple years ago, there was a court case that opened up soft money in Alaska for a brief period of time. And APOC was having a hearing on what kind of regulations they could put together to regulate it, get some disclosure, get some control. So they had a meeting, and there was a bunch of people there, and one of the people was was former Rep. Kay Brown. And she was a consultant with the ACV, which in my opinion is the portion of the extreme environmental arm of the Democratic party that has recast itself as a separate entity because they knew they weren't able to sell their message and they were actually hurting members of the party. So after a discussion on exactly what APOC would be able to do, and whether someone would be able to run a commercial that didn't expressly advocate for somebody but just told the voters "well why don't you just go visit a certain website". So the voter actually had to take a second step to get the information that was intended to shake the outcome of a specific election. And the answer from APOC wasn't real clear on exactly how they were going to handle that. Afterwards, one of the reporters spoke to the former Rep., and she said she thought she was had gotten her answer, and this is her quote "Well I've got the ad written" she said with a smile as the commission recessed "now I just have to find the money." And let me tell you, through the 527's they've found the money, and that money is starting to flood into the state of Alaska through groups like Moveon.org. with very limited disclosure.

So for those people that wrung their hands and talked about "oooh the evils of soft money", when it was proposed to come in with full disclosure of sources, full disclosure of expenditures, no expenditures, complete cessation of activities - four month from the election. Go ahead and be proud of the system that you protected. But through the summer, I am going to continue to birddog these sources of money and we'll see next year when we come back, whether we can't do something to at least get some disclosure on the million of dollars that are donated by people like billionaire George Soros, and Jane Fonda to impact elections all across the nation. Thank you.