Commentary: Indiana a flashpoint for Supreme Court campaign

INDIANAPOLIS — I invite you to take a little trip with me through the byzantine world of campaign finance as it is now playing out in Indiana.

This trip starts at the Indiana Statehouse where, on Wednesday, Attorney General Curtis Hill held a press conference urging the state’s two senators to approve Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hill’s points were clear — Gorsuch, a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is highly qualified and the Supreme Court needs a full complement of justices to do its job.

By Janet Williams, editor

thestatehousefile.com

When pressed about why he was holding a press conference on the issue, Hill replied that he’s the state’s elected attorney general and, in that role, will have business before the high court.

But really, the message was for U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly, a Democrat in a bright red state.

That press conference was announced earlier Wednesday in a news release with the letterhead of the Judicial Crisis Network, which is financing a $10 million national campaign to get Gorsuch on the high court.

And the JCN has made no secret that Donnelly is in its sights. Carrie Severino, JCN general counsel, said the group is spending upwards of $1 million in Indiana alone to persuade Donnelly to vote with Republicans and confirm Gorsuch.

“He’s in a state that went for Trump, so he’s got to decide whether he sides with the majority of his state or whether he wants to align himself with the people trying to obstruct this nomination,” Severino said.

This leads to several questions: who is the Judicial Crisis Network, where does it get its money and why Indiana?

JCN is a Washington, D.C.-based conservative political organization that says it is “dedicated to strengthening liberty and justice in America” among other goals.

Some of its money comes from an organization called the Wellspring Committee, which says its goal is to advance limited government and free markets. JCN got nearly $6.7 million from Wellspring, according to organization’s documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service in 2014, the last year for which information is available.

JCN, in turn, funnels some of its money to the Republican Attorneys General Association — nearly $1.5 million. That information comes from the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks the influence of money in politics and was current as of May 2016.

This next part of our byzantine journey brings us back to Indiana where the Republican Attorneys General donated more than $734,000 to a group called Hoosiers for Freedom last year. That information is contained in filings with the Indiana Election Commission.

Now, you would think an organization called Hoosiers for Freedom would be based in Indiana, right? Not so. Like JCN, the Republican Attorneys General and the Wellspring Committee, Hoosiers for Freedom is based in Washington, far from the heartland of Indiana.

And this is where we get back to Curtis Hill.

In 2016, Candidate Hill raised more than $1.5 million in his run for attorney general. A big chunk of that money came from Hoosiers for Freedom — more than $700,000 or close to half of his campaign cash, according to filings with the Indiana Election Commission.

All of these groups are intertwined, but our confusing and opaque campaign finance regulations make it difficult for ordinary citizens to make the connections or understand who is trying to influence our political processes.

The issue is bigger than Neil Gorsuch and the campaign to get him on the Supreme Court. He hasn’t even had a hearing yet before the Senate Judiciary Committee. That has been set for later in March and it won’t be before April until the full Senate gets a chance to vote on the nomination.

The real issue is the power and money behind the campaign to make sure the Senate confirms Gorsuch. In the end, we have little real information about who is pulling those strings and, frankly, this is no way for a democracy to function.

 

Columnist Janet Williams is editor of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..