Dark money group seeks investigation of Kansas Supreme Court justice

A national dark money group has revived a 2-year-old controversy involving a Kansas Supreme Court justice and filed an ethics complaint with the state’s Commission on Judicial Qualifications.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, which is based in Washington, D.C., sent a letter to commission on Aug. 19 asking it to investigate Justice Carol Beier over a political fundraiser her husband hosted for Democrat Paul Davis in 2014.

“Justice Beier needs to be held accountable for her careless behavior because even the mere appearance of impropriety calls into question her impartiality and erodes the public’s trust in our government,” said Matthew Whitaker, the group’s executive director, in a news release announcing the complaint Monday.

Beier, who was appointed to the court by former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius in 2003, did not attend the party her husband, Richard Green, threw on behalf of Davis’ gubernatorial campaign, but the event became the subject of controversy during the heated campaign.

The Kansas Republican Party levied criticisms at both Beier and Davis over the event and Gov. Sam Brownback’s campaign referenced it in a television ad, which sought to tie Davis to a controversial court decision.

The complaint states that the commission found in 1990 that a fundraiser hosted by a judge’s spouse at a judge’s home was in violation of the judicial code of conduct because it could be interpreted as an endorsement even if the judge did not participate in the event.

The Commission on Judicial Qualifications does not comment on the complaints its receives. Its members will determine at a future meeting whether to dismiss the complaint or pursue an investigation.

The controversy over the fundraiser had largely subsided after the 2014 election. The request for an investigation comes as Beier faces her own judicial retention election in November.

“Clearly this is an outside group making an attack … to discredit a Kansas justice who is involved in a retention election,” said Joyce Morrison, spokeswoman for Kansas for Fair Courts, a group that supports retaining Beier and the other justices up for retention this fall.

Asked if the push for an investigation was tied to the retention races, Kendra Arnold, the foundation’s general counsel, said in an e-mail that “FACT follows widely reported stories about lawmakers that raise ethics questions.”　

“The Beier incident FACT cites in its complaint, as you know, got quite a bit of media attention when it happened and while there was some agreement in Kansas political circles that what she did was wrong, nobody filed a complaint about it,” she said.

The foundation’s website says that it’s an “organization dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency in government and civic arenas by hanging a lantern over public officials who put their own interests over the interests of the public good.”

The foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization and therefore not required to disclose its donors under federal law. Kansans For Fair Courts, the group supporting the justices, also does not disclose its donors.

Arnold said in an e-mail that “FACT actually doesn’t know who its donors are” because it receives its funding through DonorsTrust.

Open Secrets, a website which tracks political spending, has described DonorsTrust as “a pass-through vessel” which enables wealthy donors, such as Charles Koch, to remain anonymous when giving to political advocacy groups.

Open Secrets questioned FACT’s use of DonorsTrust in an April blog post, noting that “an organization ‘dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency’ gets 100 percent of its funds from a group that exists mainly as a vehicle for donors to elude transparency.”

In an e-mail, Arnold contended that the group’s reliance on anonymous donors “gives FACT the ability to remain independent, which is why the group files complaints against elected officials in both parties.”

There will be limited disclosure of spending on both sides of the retention elections because, unlike district court races, the Supreme Court retention elections fall outside the state’s campaign finance act.

That means there will be no way to track the money spent by political advocacy groups weighing in on the retention elections before or after November.

This story was originally published August 23, 2016 at 5:39 PM with the headline "Dark money group seeks investigation of Kansas Supreme Court justice."