Political group sued for violating Oklahoma campaign finance laws

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OKLAHOMA CITY – The state Ethics Commission has filed a legal action against an out-of-state PAC that spent more than $150,000 to “influence the outcomes” in multiple Republican legislative races four years ago during what was described as a “civil war” in the GOP.

The commission sued the Conservative Alliance PAC and its treasurer, Chris Marston, in Oklahoma County District Court, claiming they violated Oklahoma’s campaign finance laws.

The commission seeks to compel the political action committee to pay various monetary penalties because of “the misleading or undisclosed communications” the organization “disseminated during the 2018 elections…”

“Despite their activity in Oklahoma elections,” the Conservative Alliance PAC “failed to report their activity” to the Oklahoma Ethics Commission as required by state law, the agency’s petition declares.

“Oklahomans rightly deserve and expect to have access to information on entities seeking to influence Oklahoma elections, regardless of whether they are in or out of state,” the Ethics Commission said in its lawsuit. That’s why the Ethics Commission “seeks to hold Defendants accountable for their conduct in Oklahoma campaigns.”

The CAP reported to the Federal Election Commission that it received $1,021,000 in contributions in 2018 between April 2 and Oct. 19. All of those funds were received from one donor: Prosperity Alliance, an organization based in Washington, D.C.

The CAP informed the FEC that it had a little over $1 million in “operating expenditures” in 2017-18.

Those included $206,025 spent in Oklahoma for “Non-federal Independent Expenditures,” “Direct Mail (Non-federal IE)” and “Door-to-Door,” FEC records reflect. Most of that money was used to help finance campaigns against incumbent House Republicans who were deemed to be hard-liners.

The Conservative Alliance PAC “did not report making any independent expenditures, let alone any independent expenditures in Oklahoma, in reports filed with the FEC from the time of its registration with the FEC on March 27, 2018,” until the PAC filed its termination report with the FEC on August 22, 2019, the Oklahoma Ethics Commission charged.

An attorney for the PAC argued that his client “was not required to register and file quarterly reports” with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission.

Despite their participation in Oklahoma elections, the CAP “failed to report their activity” to the Ethics Commission “as required by the state’s campaign finance laws,” the agency stated. Ethics rules “require those making campaign communications in Oklahoma elections to inform Oklahoma citizens prior to the election of the source and details of the communication.”

That information includes the source of the communication, the contact information for the communicator, the value of the communication, and the identity of the specific candidate(s) “that the communication supports or opposes.”

The Conservative Alliance PAC registered with the FEC as “an independent expenditure-only Super PAC organized to support or oppose federal candidates…” Only after making “significant expenditures” before the 2018 primary election, and “numerous discussions” with the Ethics Commission staff, did the CAP register in Oklahoma as a PAC.

Additionally, the CAP “notably did not provide their accurate phone number or any address on these communications that would have identified the actual source of the communications” as a Virginia-based political action committee.

The Ethics Commission sued the Conservative Alliance Political Action Committee for failure to file reports of independent expenditures, failure to include proper disclosures, and failure to provide documents upon request. The case was assigned to Oklahoma County District Judge Don Andrews.

The commission accused the PAC of misleading the public by including “Not authorized and paid for by a candidate or candidate committee” on at least one communication they disbursed in Oklahoma during the 2018 election cycle that was in fact made with the authorization and coordination of a candidate.

That candidate was not identified in the Ethics Commission’s legal brief.

Several incumbents

were ousted in 2018

At least four incumbent GOP state representatives (Steve Vaughan, Scooter Park, Scott McEachin and Chuck Strohm) and a GOP state senator (Ervin Yen) were defeated in the 2018 Republican primary election, and five incumbent GOP representatives (Travis Dunlap, Bobby Cleveland, Jeff Coody, Mike Ritze and George Faught) lost in the Republican runoff.

That was due at least in part to campaign material (flyers, radio spots and internet communications) financed by the Conservative Alliance PAC.

Coody, Faught and Ritze were considered anti-tax GOP “hard-liners.”

Faught, of Muskogee, was first elected in 2006 to a seat that had always been held by a Democrat. In 2018 he was running for a sixth, and final, two-year term in the Legislature.

“This group, all they really knew was the red button,” state Rep. Chris Kannady (R-Oklahoma City) told The New York Times. “They voted against everybody’s issues.”

Kannady, a moderate, eventually identified himself as the ringleader of the GOP purge. “Once you cut out the cancer that was attacking us, we’re now in a position to heal and move forward,” Kannady told the Times. “We are now unified as one.”

Kannady told The Associated Press, “All I did was have conversations with people and set things in motion, to say that this situation has to be addressed.” He also told the AP that he did not know who the principal figures in the Conservative Alliance PAC were, nor who the PAC’s donors were.

After a confrontation with Ritze at the State Capitol in March 2018, Rep. Josh West labeled the party’s disunity a “civil war.”

DAV cap led to strain

with Kannady, others

Ritze said his strained relationship with Kannady, West and other House Republicans involved more than just his votes on the House floor.

The Broken Arrow Republican is a family doctor who has been practicing medicine for 47 years; his wife is a registered nurse.

Decades ago, he said, he joined the National Guard but then was transferred to the Army Reserve; his military service in the Army Medical Corps lasted seven years, he said. He received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army in 1984.

In 1986, Ritze recalled, the Disabled American Veterans chapter in Broken Arrow presented him with a DAV cap adorned with a Purple Heart pin and a caduceus, among other small emblems. “They told me I was an honorary member of their DAV chapter.”

One of those veterans “was on Omaha Beach” on D-Day, Ritze said. Another had been a German prisoner of war who lost some toes to frostbite when Nazi soldiers marched him through the snow. A third veteran “was run over by a German tank,” Ritze said. A couple of the DAV members were tortured while German POWs, he said.

The World War II veterans “were patients of mine and I provided that service to them for free” in addition to his regular medical practice, Ritze said.

One day Ritze wore the cap at the State Capitol. Subsequently one or more of the House members who served in the armed forces notified the national DAV. Republican colleagues accused him of “stolen valor” and dishonoring truly disabled military veterans.

Ritze said that during the 2018 campaign cycle, three glossy attack mailers were distributed in his legislative district. One included a photo of West lying in a hospital bed, recovering from multiple gunshot wounds he sustained in 2003 while deployed in Iraq with the U.S. Army.

Rep. Kevin McDugle (R-Broken Arrow), a Marine Corps veteran who became a drill instructor at Parris Island, South Carolina, criticized Ritze on a Tulsa radio talk show.

Kannady joined the U.S. Marine Corps after 9/11 and served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I never said I received a Purple Heart medal,” Ritze told Southwest Ledger, and his adversaries “never asked me anything about that cap.”