Joseph Backholm, Executive Director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington:

A Lynnwood-based organization that opposes the state's domestic partnership law and is working to defeat Referendum 71 has filed suit in U.S. District Court in Tacoma seeking to circumvent campaign contribution limits of $5,000 and to keep secret the names of those who make smaller donations. [...]

The attorney for the Family Policy Institute of Washington, which filed the lawsuit through its newly formed Family PAC late Wednesday, acknowledged that there are substantial contributions in the offing that the campaign wants to accept but can't because of the limits.

So now that the large contribution deadline has passed for everyone else, Backholm's affiliate of Focus on the Family wants the state to change the rules—so they can flood a bigoted campaign with money—because bigots deserve special rights. Family Policy Institute of Washington (which claims Referendum 71 "threatens every citizen's freedom to disagree" and says that "discrimination is not only appropriate, it is necessary for survival") is the same group that poured $200,000 into the Vote Reject R-71 in the final days before the cutoff for large contributions. But they obviously have more. A few days before the deadline, Dave Mortenson, a conservative campaign consultant who filed the PAC funded by FPIW, said, "A bunch of individuals contacted me to see if we could raise some money really quick." He said, "I am not going to share who I’ve been talking to, but if we do get the money, we will report it." Are those religious groups, corporations, wealthy donors, I asked? "We are working them all," Mortenson said. He wouldn't tell me who those groups were then. And now, if the bigots get their way to keep donations secret, we'll never know.

If they must, the state's public disclosure commission should challenge this case all the way to the Supreme Court. The Special Rights for Bigots campaign is already going to D.C. to keep petition signers' names sealed (and I hope that the Supremes only accepted the case to settle the issue on the side of transparency). A state court already decided that donors' names must remain public. But this new federal case should languish in the court a while; regardless of the outcome, litigation will eat up every day before the election, so they'll never be able to spend their bigot bucks.

Photo graciously provided by FPIW.