December 16, 2011 09:40 PM UTC

Gessler's Campaign Finance Rule Changes: Worst Cheering Section Ever

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Durango Herald’s Joe Hanel reports on yesterday’s packed hearing in Denver to discuss Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s proposed campaign finance rule changes:

Secretary of State Scott Gessler is moving to simplify and loosen the rules for when people who run ballot campaigns have to publicly disclose their finances…

Activists on the left argued against Gessler’s plan and called for tighter rules in a hearing Thursday. People on the right tended to back Gessler’s plan, saying that many low-budget campaigns are the victims of legal harassment because they have a hard time following Colorado’s complex election laws…

Russell Haas called himself “a victim of being a proponent of an initiative” and said he was forced to defend himself in legal proceedings.

Haas was an official sponsor of 2010’s Amendment 61, which would have strictly limited state and local debt. A judge later found that antitax activist Douglas Bruce provided most of the funding and organization for Amendment 61 and two others through his charity, Active Citizens Together. [Pols emphasis]

In a courtroom just a mile away, Bruce was on trial for tax-evasion charges…

So, in our wildest dreams, we can hardly imagine a worse spokesman in favor of Gessler’s plan to loosen campaign finance reporting requirements than one of the key figures in last year’s “Bad 3” initiative campaign–which made headlines for its secrecy and brazen contempt for the law, and behind-the-scenes kingpin Doug “Dr. Evil” Bruce now on trial for tax evasion related to the shell “nonprofit” that funded the campaign. Is there a better example? A mobster calling for fewer cops on the street? We don’t even think Al Capone was that bold.

To be fair, we honestly doubt that Gessler actually wanted one of Doug Bruce’s lackeys from the “Bad 3” campaign to show up at yesterday’s public hearing in support of his weakened campaign finance rules–because that would be kind of suicidally tone-deaf of him.

But there he was. Gessler’s self-described beneficiary casts this all in a rather different light.