Independent Campaign Spending Requires A Floor Plan Of The Consultant’s Head

Frederick County Republicans have asked Maryland election officials to investigate whether a consultant’s work for a Democratic candidate and a super PAC violated the state’s rules against coordination. The complaint is unresolved. The candidate’s campaign says the firm handled one standalone event, received no proprietary information and has not worked for it since. Shared vendors can be legal if an adequate firewall prevents strategic information from crossing over.

Good. We have established the central question: did the information remain in its assigned room?

Sophia Silbergeld worked on a fundraising event for County Executive Jessica Fitzwater last fall. She is now treasurer of United Frederick, which had spent nearly $500,000 by Friday attacking Fitzwater’s Republican opponent, Jeff Holtzinger. The campaign says the event work happened roughly nine months before the PAC was formed. Maryland’s separation window is eighteen months.

Silbergeld says Fitzwater is not a client and that she will respond when she receives the complaint. Even the Republicans acknowledge that none of the facts alone proves coordination. Election officials have confirmed receipt, not announced a finding.

So put the guilty stamps away. We do not know that the line was crossed. I would, however, like a closer look at the increasingly elaborate architecture required to establish where the line is.

The event was standalone. The later spending was independent. The consultant is shared, but shared does not necessarily mean coordinated. There may be a firewall. There may be permitted information on one side and prohibited strategic information on the other.

Wonderful. American democracy has reached the point where a person can have more internal partitions than a discount office renovation.

I’m picturing a consultant’s head with two reception desks. Campaign information, please take the left corridor. Independent expenditure, the right. If you encounter a familiar thought in the hallway, do not greet it. Compliance is watching.

This is not an argument that a single fundraising event secretly gave someone the campaign’s master plan. The campaign specifically denies access to proprietary information. Organizing a dinner and directing a campaign are different jobs. A seating chart is not automatically a strategy document, though in politics I imagine it can become one once the donors start arguing about the table near the bathroom.

The absurdity is the system we have built around the word “independent.” Outside groups can raise and spend almost unlimited amounts. The public’s protection is that the outside money must stay outside the campaign’s strategic conversation, even when some of the same professionals appear around both operations.

This is a very expensive version of sitting beside somebody during an exam and insisting the desk divider is load-bearing.

Maryland election director Jared DeMarinis says the aim is to ensure that independent spending is truly independent. He also says shared vendors, even consultants, can be permissible with a firewall restricting strategic information. That is the actual standard officials must apply, not my opinion of the word “standalone.”

But consider the voter trying to follow this. The PAC sends a mailer attacking a candidate. The voter asks who paid for it. Then who is running the group. Then what that person did for the opposing campaign. Then whether the work included protected information. Then whether a firewall existed.

Congratulations. You started by checking your mail and have been promoted to inspecting the floor plan of a consultant’s professional consciousness.

The Republican complaint asks officials to establish what happened. Let them. The answer could vindicate the separation or identify a violation. That is what investigations are for.

In the meantime, I would appreciate campaign finance being explained in terms ordinary humans can use without a specialist standing beside them holding a diagram.

Apparently “independent” does not necessarily mean nobody knows anybody.

It means the people who know everybody must know exactly which things they are not allowed to know together.

Half a million dollars in attack ads, and now I need a fucking room schedule for the knowledge.