Dark money groups reeeally don't want Arizona voters to know who's behind their attack ads

It’s that time in the elections cycle when “dark money” groups go to work to make sure that never will you ever, ever – not EVER – get to know who is pulling the strings in Arizona’s elections.

And so comes the inevitable lawsuit to make sure the Voters’ Right to Know Act doesn’t get anywhere near the November ballot.

A coalition of dark money groups is asking a Maricopa County Superior Court judge to throw out more than 300,000 petition signatures and block Arizona voters from deciding whether big-money donors who secretly fund political campaigns should have to come into the light.

Much as they blocked a similar proposal from reaching the ballot in 2018.

Dark money groups want signatures tossed

Kory Langhofer, the attorney for the three dark money groups – Arizona Free Enterprise Club, Americans for Prosperity, the Center for Arizona Policy Action, along with the Goldwater Institute – declined to talk to me about his lawsuit.

In the past, these groups have contended that corporations and the people behind them have a First Amendment right to spend whatever it takes to get their candidates elected without anybody knowing about it.

More from Roberts: Here's your chance to know who's behind those attack ads

Terry Goddard, who for years has been trying to get dark money disclosure on the ballot, says he believes that he – and the more than 350,000 Arizona voters who signed the Voters’ Right to Know petitions – will prevail.

“We have the right under our constitution to petition our government to get an initiative on the ballot, and that’s a very strong, powerful and time-honored right in this state. And I think anything that would affect it should be serious,” he told me.

The lawsuit doesn’t allege that any of the voters’ signatures are phony. Instead, it relies on a series of laws passed a few years ago for the sole reason of making it more difficult to put citizen initiatives on the ballot.

Chief among those obstacles is a 2017 law that requires initiative campaigns to “strictly comply” with all laws, as opposed to the previous “substantial compliance” standard long used by judges. The goal is to force judges to kill initiatives for any minor infraction.

They are questioning an address for subpoenas

In this case, the dark money crowd’s lawsuit is claiming the campaign’s paid petition circulators did not properly register with the Secretary of State’s Office. Chiefly, that they didn’t use the proper address for where they could be served with subpoenas, should the need arise.

“Certain circulators of the Initiative Petition disclosed on their registration submissions a service of process address that is not 514 W. Roosevelt, Phoenix, Arizona 85003,” the lawsuit says. “Because they did not provide on their registrations a complete and statutorily required service of process address, these circulators did not strictly comply with A.R.S. § 19-118(B)(4) and hence were not ‘properly registered’ with the Secretary of State. Accordingly, all signatures on the Initiative Petition that they collected are invalid and must be disqualified.”

All 307,000 of them, leaving the campaign far short of the number needed to make the ballot.

Instead of using the 514 W. Roosevelt address – the one listed on the original May 2021 application for the Voters’ Right to Know Act – the circulators listed 502 W. Roosevelt as the place to serve subpoenas. Both buildings were used by the campaign. They’re next door to one another and share a parking lot.

Goddard says he directed the circulators to use the 502 address because it ultimately became the campaign’s headquarters, with the other mostly used for picking up and dropping off petitions. The 502 address is also his law firm, ensuring that someone would always be there to accept service of any subpoenas.

“I wanted to make sure we never missed a legitimate subpoena,” he said.

And for good reason.

Will a judge see this challenge for what it is?

Goddard’s 2018 Outlaw Dirty Money initiative was tossed off the ballot after circulators didn’t show up in court to testify. It seems their subpoenas were delivered to a campaign headquarters that had been vacated once the petition drive was over and thus no one knew about them.

The judge, in that case, had no choice. That’s because another one of those state laws passed by our leaders requires judges to automatically disqualify every signature obtained by a circulator who is subpoenaed but doesn’t show up in court.

So now we have a judge who is being asked to toss out an initiative because Goddard advised his circulators to use an address where the subpoenas were sure to be found.

They aren’t trying to duck the subpoenas. They’re trying to make they get them this time.

A hearing on the case is scheduled for Friday morning before Judge Joseph Mikitish.

Hopefully he’ll see this lawsuit for what it is.

For a decade, state leaders have stood by and allowed dark money to run like a river in this state, launching stealth attacks on candidates without having to identify themselves. Pushing us to vote a certain way without having to tell us who is secretly to influence our vote – or why.

God forbid we allow voters to decide whether they have a right to know who is trying to buy our elections.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Dark money groups really don't want voters to unveil their donors