MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - A court has determined that the Republican Governors Association violated campaign finance law in 2010 by taking in contributions larger than the state limit of $2,000 and that its attempt to set up a new independent expenditure political action committee didn’t get it around the law.
The activities by the RGA-affiliated Green Mountain Prosperity came during what turned out to be a razor-thin win by Democrat Peter Shumlin over Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie in the 2010 election.
In a ruling issued Monday and announced by the office of Attorney General William Sorrell on Wednesday, Judge Helen Toor of the Superior Court in Washington County found that neither the Republican Governors Association nor Green Mountain Prosperity qualified as independent.
There was no separate board or staff and no separate solicitation of contributions by the Republican Governors Association and Green Mountain Prosperity, the judge found.
“But for a separate checkbook, they were one and the same,” the judge wrote.
According to an Associated Press report at the time, donors who thought they were giving to the Republican Governors Association had their checks cashed by Green Mountain Prosperity. The AP found Green Mountain Prosperity had raised nearly $160,000 by early August, more than any other political action committee in the state.
Republican Governors Association spokesman Jon Thompson called the ruling “a decision that an organization forfeits its right to make independent expenditures, with separate funds not subject to contribution limits, if it contributes to a candidate with funds that are subject to contribution limits. As the court conceded, other courts disagree with that position. So do we.”
The 2010 campaign followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision earlier that year in which the court found the First Amendment barred governments from limiting independent political expenditures by nonprofit groups.
Megan Shafritz, assistant attorney general in charge of her office’s civil division, said it identified a series of violations in the 2010 activities, each of which could bring a civil fine of up to $10,000. She said it would be up to the court to decide the size of the penalty after a future hearing.
The case was one of several court rulings or legal settlements in recent years concerning allegations that Republican- and Democratic-leaning groups had violated the state’s campaign finance law.
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