GOP complaint over mailers dismissed

A campaign mailer that in some ways resembled one recently sent to Montana voters by political science researchers at Stanford University and Dartmouth College was not illegal, Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl ruled Oct. 31.

The new mailers, titled “Montana Voters’ Guide for Judicial Elections,” were sent by Montanans for Liberty and Justice, a group supporting Supreme Court Justice Mike Wheat’s re-election campaign.

Wheat is seeking to keep his seat on the court against challenger Lawrence Van Dyke in a race in which outside groups have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on mailers and television ads.

Montana Republican Party executive director Bowen Greenwood filed a campaign violation complaint against Montanans for Liberty and Justice. He compared the group’s mailer to the one sent last week as part of the Stanford and Dartmouth research project.

The mailers sent to 100,000 Montana residents by the university researchers appeared to be an official document that used the Great Seal of Montana. The mailers showed a line graph that rated the candidates in the state’s two nonpartisan Supreme Court races by political ideology.

Motl, however, said the mailers sent by Montanans for Liberty and Justice do not pose the same potential legal problems. He said their mailer is different from the university researchers because it did not use the state seal and did not inject partisanship into the nonpartisan race.

Montanans for Liberty and Justice’s mailer is a straight-forward campaign piece that discloses who paid for it and did not present the image of an official state document as the Stanford flier did, Motl said in his decision.

Montanans for Liberty and Justice is a political committee largely funded by the political-action committee of the Montana Trial Lawyers Association.

Greenwood, however, pointed to a potential conflict of interest for Motl. The law firm Motl co-founded, Morrison, Sherwood, Wilson and Deola, had contributed $10,000 to Montanans for Liberty and Justice, Greenwood said.

“He should not have ruled in this because he is conflicted,” Greenwood said.

Greenwood filed a new complaint with the political practices commissioner’s office on Oct. 31 seeking to have the law firm ruled a political committee and to have Motl recuse himself.

In response, Motl said he has no conflict because he sold all of his financial interests in the law firm last year after becoming commissioner. He also said he was not consulted on any decisions about any contributions the firm planned to make.

“I realized that to do this job I had to sever myself completely from my former law firm, and I did that,” Motl said. “I did that because it was required in order to put someone in here who efficiently and quickly makes decisions.”