Two important legislative advocates for clean elections in Iowa have denounced an attempt to disqualify the director of the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board from investigating possible Iowa election law violations by a national anti-marriage equality group.
State Senator Jeff Danielson of Black Hawk, chair of the Senate State Government Committee, and Liz Mathis, chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Administration and Regulation, issued the following joint statement on Thursday, August 15:
“The overreaching attack by National Organization for Marriage on Megan Tooker, the executive director of the Iowa Ethics Board, is entirely without merit. Director Tooker’s work as a legal clerk for former Supreme Court Justice Streit has nothing to do with the NOM’s refusal to play by the same rules followed by everyone else involved in Iowa elections. Iowans have the right to know if our state’s clean election laws were violated by an out-of-state group funded by secret donors.”
The law at issue in the case was Iowa’s response to the controversial “Citizens United” ruling by U.S. Supreme Court. When the top federal court eliminated many state and federal limits on campaign contributions, Iowa lawmakers responded by passing new laws requiring Iowa campaigns, including independent expenditures, to disclose the names of their donors.
The Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board voted unanimously on August 8th to investigate whether NOM violated those Iowa laws by refusing to disclose the funders behind the organization’s 2010 and 2012 campaigns against the Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of marriage equality in 2004. The ethics board acted in response to a complaint filed by former Republican presidential candidate Fred Karger.
NOM is now alleging that the Tooker, the ethics board’s director, should be prevented from investigating the case because she once clerked for ousted Iowa Supreme Court Justice Michael Streit.
The board is expected to discuss and respond to the complaint against Director Tooker at a meeting sometime next week.
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