COLUMN: Ralston

     Don't be misled by the mindless state capital squawking about how to end negative campaigning. It's a noisy diversion to cover up a crime: The Gang of 63 is planning a murder.
      The victim, an omnibus campaign finance reform bill, would dramatically affect how elections are funded and thus how government is run. Senate Bill 215 provides a clear choice between a status quo that sanctions money laundering and codifies special-interest influence, and a revised landscape that would make every campaign an open book.
      I'm no Pollyanna. Crooks will always find ways to be crooks. But lowering the contribution disclosure threshold to $100 from $500 and forcing political parties and caucuses to report their funds and abide by caps would have an immense impact.
      That's why so many lawmakers, especially the more influential ones who derive their power from the current system, want to participate in this killing. The events last week in the state Senate were a prelude to the murder, a trail of evidence that doesn't require Hercule Poirot's detective skills.
      On Friday, the Senate postponed a vote on the bill, which is likely to pass early this week. But there's more than one way to commit murder in Carson City.
      The Broad Daylight approach -- a committee or floor vote to slay the legislation -- would be too obvious. So would the Under Cover of Darkness approach -- having a committee chairman bottle up the bill. So the more subtle Amend to Death approach is being used -- and this time, it's not very subtle.
      The original bill had a couple of sections tacked on that have nothing to do with campaign finance reform. They would have imposed criminal penalties on candidates who lied "with actual malice," a libel standard and difficult to prove.
      If the negative campaigning issue were addressed in another bill, which the GOP Senate majority refused to do last week, the campaign finance bill would be pristine. So why is it in there? Be suspicious, be very suspicious.
      As if playing to the GOP script, Senate Democrats last week raised concerns about the criminal penalties and suggested they be withdrawn. In response, Republicans proposed two potential killer amendments: either take campaign complaints to the Ethics Commission or to a panel of three former elected officials.
      Both ideas are nutty. The Ethics Commission already is shamelessly and shamefully used as a club by candidates to pummel opponents and generate headlines from an undiscriminating media. To allow the commission or another panel to act as a negative campaigning tribunal would create even more of a license to abuse the process. But I won't fall for the sleight of hand lawmakers are trying to execute and waste any more space on an irrelevant issue.
      Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio has exerted an iron grip on his caucus, which voted in lockstep to ensure the Ethics Commission amendment was appended to the bill last week. Democrats protested, but they have only nine of 21 votes.
      This week, the measure should go to the Assembly. Those 42 lawmakers can take out the negative campaigning provision and force a conference committee. But that would make them accomplices to murder, because the bill would then surely die in the Rush to Close. Or they could decide that the good in the bill (the disclosure provisions) outweighs the bad (the negative campaigning nonsense).
      "If we don't leave some of the crap in, we've got to change (the bill), which puts it at risk," lamented one Assembly Democrat. "But the stuff they want us to leave in is absolutely horrible."
      Just the Hobson's choice the Senate hoped to create. But while the Republicans now look like the murderers, don't hold the Democrats blameless. If Raggio & Co. hadn't played the Amend to Death game, my guess is the Assembly Democrats would have loaded an amendment or two into their revolvers. Opposition to campaign reform is one of the truly bipartisan causes in politics.
      Unless the media are vigilant, unless the public starts paying attention, lawmakers, aided and abetted by moneyed interests who want to preserve the status quo, will succeed. And they will have gotten away with murder.
     
     
     Jon Ralston publishes The Ralston Report, a political newsletter. His column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. He can be reached via e-mail at jon_ralston@lvrj.com.