As we approach election day, political tactics have become more desperate in opposition to reforms that will include many more voters and address outside money in our local city elections. The electoral reform in Proposal C will allow more of our community to participate in choosing our local city leaders by shifting our decisive City elections from August to November. The campaign finance reform in Proposal D will help grassroots candidates compete in City elections with small local donations instead of big money from outside the City. Learn more about the proposals at the websites below:
AnnArborPropC.com
AnnArborPropD.com
An anti-reform coalition (led by Mayor Taylor and Council Member Eyer) has highlighted and underlined the exact problem we are aiming to solve: big money, non-local money, and political action committees (PACs) overwhelming local campaigns.
POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEES
The purpose of a political action committee (PAC) is to collect and distribute campaign donations in much larger amounts. A PAC can receive unlimited donations from individuals; the PAC can then donate to candidate campaigns in amounts ten times larger than individual limits. In 2023, Mayor Taylor cheerily announced the organization of his own PAC, unironically called “Ann Arbor for Everyone.”
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2023/10/ann-arbor-mayor-starts-new-pac-called-ann-arbor-for-everyone.html
The Mayor’s PAC quickly collected $20,000. It collected $15,000 from just three donors: $5,000 from a local “real estate investor,” $5,000 from a local developer, and another $5,000 from California.
https://campaignfinance.us/docs.washtenaw.mi/32009.pdf
A proposed small donor matching program (Proposal D) addresses the inequities of this big money model in the only way that complies with the Supreme Court ruling in Citizen’s United: public funding. Such programs exist in other progressive communities where leaders care about a fair and accessible democracy. Proposal D will help grassroots candidates rely on small local donations to compete against big money from PACs and other special interests.
Over the last several months, City residents have been targeted with emails funded by Mayor Taylor’s “Ann Arbor For Everyone” PAC, urging opposition to campaign finance reform. These emails advertise how big money – from profit interests and from out of state – is leveraged to fight local campaign finance reform.
“DARK MONEY” & DENIALS
We know that the Mayor’s PAC collects money from profit interests and from out of state because the financial reports are, at least, public. Other campaign spending is much less transparent— so-called “dark money” can be spent on political campaigns without any public reporting of where the money came from.
In 2018, “dark money” from Lansing funded attack mailers targeting candidates in Ann Arbor. These mailers were later traced back to the business partner of now Council Member Jen Eyer. She postured innocence and claimed to have no knowledge about them.
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2018/08/dark_money_attacks_on_ann_arbo.html
In 2021, when this same business partner was accused of sexual harassment, Eyer quickly pivoted with excuses that she was merely an employee and not a business partner. This led to the admission that Eyer’s own 2020 campaign materials – claiming to be a “small business owner” – were inaccurate and dishonest.
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2021/03/ann-arbor-council-member-campaigned-as-small-business-owner-now-admits-that-wasnt-true.html
This month, we saw more “dark money” from Lansing. In opposition to the electoral reforms in Prop C and Prop D, an entity called “Michigan Deserves Better” funded a mailer full of distortions and half-truths. You can learn more about this entity and the people behind it here:
https://www.lansingcitypulse.com/stories/twitter-boots-lansing-political-consultant-over-abuse-and-harassment,19280
When asked about these mailers, anti-reform organizers Council Member Eyer and Mayor Taylor postured innocence.
https://www.mlive.com/politics/2024/10/dark-money-attack-ads-out-of-lansing-take-aim-at-ann-arbor-ballot-proposals.html
A BETTER WAY
Last year, the elected City Council of Evanston implemented a small donor matching program without the need for citizen petitions or a community referendum. In the last six months, I’ve talked with leaders and activists in Evanston, all of whom explained: Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss has access to large fundraising networks, but he championed the reform because he recognized the inequities. Mayor Biss was able to set aside his own political self interest in support of progressive democratic values.
It is remarkable that Ann Arbor’s City leaders are so determined to push us in the opposite direction. People in Evanston were shocked when I explained that – in contrast to their Mayor’s work to promote equity – our own Mayor had started a PAC to give big money yet more influence in our local elections.
“WE WOULD ALL BE OFFENDED”
In 2012, Ann Arbor City Council approved a resolution denouncing the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, which allows corporations, labor unions, and domestic dependent sovereigns to make unlimited expenditures on behalf of state or local candidates. Council discussed big money in City campaigns as a hypothetical, a problem that did not yet impact our local community. Mayor Taylor (then Council Member) opposed the resolution, suggesting that it was “too diffuse” and “outside of our local sphere.” Then Council Member Sabra Briere recognized that the ruling in Citizens United was quite relevant to the local community:
“It would be possible for someone with sufficient revenue or some entity with sufficient revenue to actually fund a political action committee here in our community and attempt to influence the outcome of an election. That attempt could be made not by hundreds or even dozens of individual donors, but by one or two people who could afford the literature, the advertising, the banners that are put up around town while the individual that was against that position or against that candidate would never be able to match those funds. For me it’s a matter of local equity as such as it is a matter of national equity… If we saw a campaign in our community with enormous amount of private dollars being poured into it, we would all be offended and yet it would be really easy to do that.”
Mayor Taylor has demonstrated that it was, in fact, really easy to fund a political action committee in our community. Next month, we will find out if then Council Member Briere accurately assessed the values of the Ann Arbor community: are we offended by enormous amounts of private dollars poured into campaigns?