Michele Reagan offers big assist to dark-money forces

Arizona continues its descent into darkness this week as the state's chief elections officer announces that no longer will her office enforce a law designed to give candidates who are targets of political attack ads time to respond.

Fresh off of attacking the Clean Elections Commission for trying to shine a light on dark money, Secretary of State Michele Reagan told Capitol Media Services' Howard Fischer that the law requiring that a candidate be notified of a last-minute attack is likely unconstitutional. And besides that, it's such a minor thing.

You know, giving candidates fair warning so they can rebut hit pieces, which at times are divorced from actual facts? But hey, they work.

"Perhaps there are other violations that warrant a lot more of the office's time and response," Reagan said, in a story in today's Arizona Capitol Times.

Other violations? Like what? Going after dark money? She's already made it clear that's not a priority.

And now, the lords of darkness can go further underground, courtesy of Reagan..

State law requires that any political committee putting out campaign ads within 60 days of an election send a copy of the ad to candidates mentioned, via certified mail, within 24 hours of airing or publishing the ad.

These days, most last-minute attacks come from so-called independent campaigns, allowing the candidates they seek to elect to keep the appearance of clean hands. And many independent campaigns are funded by often-inexhaustible supplies dark money, making it impossible to know who is doing the attacking.

So now, targeted candidates not only won't see what's coming or who's paying for it in the last days of a campaign, but they'll have no real opportunity to rebut it. And voters won't know who is putting out the hit or whether the allegations are true before they cast their ballots.

Welcome to Arizona, the sunshine state.

Neither Reagan nor her elections director, Eric Spencer, explained how it is that they get to decide what laws are valid.

"It's our constitutional duty not to enforce a statute that's unconstitutional," Spencer told Fischer. "A statute need not necessarily be held unconstitutional by a court for an executive branch officer to recognize a law's unconstitutional."

Given that, I wonder why Gov. Doug Ducey hasn't simply declared that abortion is unconstutional in Arizona. Or dark money (sure, that'll happen.)

Last I heard, the courts determine the constitutionality of those laws – not blatantly political bureaucrats, And the Legislature makes laws, not Spencer and not even Michele Reagan.

It's their job to enforce them. Or, as it turns out, not.

What a sad day for our beloved Arizona.