‘Full Disclosure’ Sought For Political Ads

Key former FCC Democrats have urged the agency to plug what critics allege is a loophole in existing political advertising law that allows nonprofit groups to protect the identities of donors for some political broadcast attack ads.

“This pervasive use of secret money undermines the democratic process,” said Newton Minow, former FCC chairman, and Henry Geller, a former agency general counsel who previously headed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, in a petition filed Monday at the FCC. “Full sponsorship disclosure is the law.”

The two Democrats are urging the agency to act, because FCC rules only require disclosure of the actual sponsor of the issue ads — not also the individuals or groups who donated funds to the sponsor of the ads.

In their petition, Minow and Geller insist that the FCC already has the power to require the additional donor disclosure.

“It is the responsibility of the FCC to enforce the long-established rule,” the two said in their petition. “The voting public needs and is entitled to know who is trying to persuade it.”

In their petition, the two Democrats also said $332 million of “dark money” was spent on controversial radio and TV issues ads by so-called social welfare organizations during the last election cycle.

Absent FCC intervention, there will be a “tsunami” of similarly anonymous attack ads during the upcoming mid-term election, the two said.

The disclosure issue is a hot one on Capitol Hill, where GOP lawmakers have blocked Democrat-backed legislation that would require donor disclosure. It also was the issue that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-N.M.) cited for blocking a Senate confirmation vote for the agency’s current chairman — Tom Wheeler — for six months last year.

Cruz put a hold on Wheeler’s confirmation vote due to concerns that Wheeler might move to impose the disclosure requirements, without Congress’ approval, the senator said last year.

But during a meeting with Wheeler in October, Cruz said the FCC nominee made clear that he had “heard the unambiguous message” that trying to impose the disclosure requirements, absent congressional approval “would imperil the commission’s vital statutory responsibilities, and he [Wheeler] explicitly stated that doing so was ‘not a priority,’ ” Cruz said at the time.

Neither Wheeler nor the National Association of Broadcasters would comment on the petition, according to their spokesmen.