Violation issues found in Nodler's campaign reports

By Max McCoy

Globe Investigative Writer

Despite being a vocal supporter of a campaign reform bill that would increase reporting requirements for candidates, Gary Nodler apparently has committed a number of campaign disclosure violations in connection with his own bid for state senator.

More than $20,000 in contributions - about 9 percent of Nodler's total - came from individuals for whom no occupation or employer information was listed in reports to the Missouri Ethics Commission, a computer-aided data analysis by the Globe found.

In addition, expenditures for television advertising totaling $2,244 during his primary campaign in 2002 were not reported until after the election and months after they were due.

Nodler won the 2002 Republican primary by 73 votes and was unopposed in the general election. He has no challenger this year for the Senate seat from the 32nd District, which comprises Jasper, Newton and Dade counties.

Although campaign violations could result in several thousand dollars in fines, the Missouri Ethics Commission will not take up violations unless a complaint has been filed, or unless problems are revealed in the 5 percent of disclosure reports that are chosen for random audit.

Nodler, a 55-year-old Joplin Republican, has refused to grant an interview for this story and has not responded to a list of questions faxed to his Jefferson City office. Tom Flanigan, of Carthage, treasurer for the Elect Nodler Committee, also declined an interview.

Reform measure

The bipartisan campaign reform bill that Nodler co-sponsored - along with 26 other senators - would require candidates to file reports every 24 hours in the last three weeks before an election. The bill, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph, also would eliminate all caps on political contributions. The measure has passed the Senate but remains stalled in the House and is not expected to pass this session.

Currently, individual limits are $1,275 for candidates for statewide office, $650 for state Senate candidates and $325 for House candidates. Political committees are allowed to give about 10 times those amounts.

"During non-election years, public officials will still have to file campaign finance reports quarterly, but during election years, they must file monthly," Nodler said in a prepared statement he issued announcing his support of the bill. "During the last weeks before election, a report must be filed every 24 hours. This is critical in improving the accountability of elected officials."

Its own level

There's an old saying about campaign finance, says political analyst Terry Jones: Money, like water, finds its own level.

Jones, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, says that despite repeated attempts to reform campaign finance at both the federal and state levels, interest groups keep finding ways to get around the reforms to keep the cash flowing into the coffers of like-minded candidates.

"If you look back 40 years, none of the reforms have worked," Jones said. "They achieve them for an election cycle or two, but then groups find a way to get around it."

The federal 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, for example, banned unlimited corporate, union and individual contributions to political parties and candidates. It was an effort to control so-called soft money, or campaign contributions that weren't limited by the Federal Election Commission. But no sooner had the measure become law than a loophole was found, and what is known as 527 groups were created, named after the section of the tax code that regulates them.

Such groups are not subject to campaign regulations as long as they don't literally advocate voting for or against a candidate.

In Missouri, campaign reforms passed in the 1990s by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly severely limited the amount of money that could be given to a candidate by individuals and political committees.

While those limits remain in effect, the way around them - for both parties - has been the proliferation of continuing and political committees.

Power grid

To understand the procedure, think of money as the power that drives political campaigns and the network of committees as the power grid that distributes that energy to candidates. Any one candidate for the state Senate, for example, may receive only $650 in any election cycle from an individual donor, and $6,400 from a political committee.

But the network of committees - the power grid - is limited only by the number of committees that are created, and there are no limits on how much money can pass between political committees.

The result is the ability to energize campaigns with an aggregate amount of money that can be very large, and the ability to quickly shift money among committees to meet challenges. The three committees associated with Nodler, for example - the Elect Nodler Committee, the Nodler Leadership Political Action Committee and the 32nd Senatorial District GOP Committee - have routinely passed tens of thousands of dollars among one another in the past few years.

The Nodler Leadership PAC has passed a total of $29,000 to the 32nd District committee since 2004, while the district committee has passed nearly an equal amount - $29,300 - back to the leadership PAC.

The Elect Nodler Committee gave a modest contribution of $100 to the leadership PAC and a more generous contribution of $2,400 to the 32nd District committee.

The biggest contribution received by the 32nd District committee was $48,400 from the state Republican Party in the final days leading up to the 2004 general election. The Nodler Leadership PAC also gave a total of $41,500 to the GOP Senate Majority Fund.

While Nodler does not control the leadership PAC that bears his name or the party's 32nd District committee, he has close ties to those who do. Flanigan, the Elect Nodler treasurer, is also treasurer of the district committee. Nick Myers, a Joplin certified public accountant, is treasurer of the leadership PAC, the Newton County GOP chairman and a Nodler contributor.

Another result of the proliferation of committees and money swapping is that it is impossible to follow the money trail from the source to the candidate. When an individual contributes tens of thousands of dollars to a leadership PAC, for example, that money is put into a common pot, which is distributed to many candidates and often transferred to other committees.

Also, special interests may create an unlimited number of committees with which to distribute money, and it often is difficult to determine from the names of the committees from where the money actually comes.

The Missouri Bankers Association, for example, has seven PACs registered with the Missouri Ethics Commission. Six of those PACs have contributed a total of $4,175 to Nodler's campaign committee since 2002. Their names, all prefaced with MBA, include the Mark Twain Region PAC, the Ozark Region PAC, the Pony Express PAC and the River Heritage PAC.

And unlike many other states - say, Texas, where corporate contributions were a factor in the firestorm that brought down House Majority Leader Tom DeLay - Missouri allows contributions from corporations.

"Just about anybody can give in Missouri," said Jones, the political analyst. "And I don't know how many states prohibit corporations from giving, but it's quite a few. Organizations can give directly, and usually to give you have to set up a PAC. On the other hand, Missouri has more stringent donation limits than most states and, as a result, candidates either have to get their money from more people to run a campaign that is viable, or you have to find ways to get around it."

Compliance

Bob Connor, executive director of the Missouri Ethics Commission, said disclosure reports must list the occupation and employer of an individual contributor. If a complaint is filed, or the violation is uncovered in a random audit, Connor said, the committee is sent a letter asking for the information.

Normally, he said, the commission allows the reports to be amended. "The MEC is interested in compliance," Connor said. "If we get that, then we have met our goal."

Only if no reply is received is the matter brought before the six commission members.

In the case of failing to report occupation and employer information, Connor said, fines are decided on a case-by-case basis. In the case of failing to report expenditures by the required disclosure dates, he said, the fines are set at $10 a day for the first month and $100 a day thereafter, to a maximum of $3,000.

The Elect Nodler Committee failed to report an April 5 payment of $195.50 to KODE-TV and a July 13 payment of $2,048.50 to KOAM-TV until Oct. 12, 2002 - more than two months after the primary election. Both violations would be subject to the maximum $3,000 fine, since they were about 90 days and 70 days past the disclosure dates.

Both expenditures were listed as amendments to the committee's October 2002 quarterly report. The KODE expenditure should have been reported by mid-July and the KOAM payment by the end of July, in the report that was due days before the election.

"Expenditures are to be reported when they are incurred," Connor said. "So if you sign a contract with a company for TV ads or whatever, and, let's say, you incur it in the month of June but it won't run until July or August, you still have to report it as an expenditure."

Committees are required to report only the identity of the treasurer of a committee, and the deputy treasurer if there is one, to the Ethics Commission. Flanigan is listed on ethics reports as treasurer of the Elect Nodler Committee, and Nodler's wife, Joncee, is listed as deputy treasurer.

Among the requests the Globe faxed to Gary Nodler was to identify all officers of his campaign committee and of the leadership PAC that bears his name. That question, along with the others in the fax, went unanswered.