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Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s re-election campaign this week sought to dismiss charges related to his recent political activities that allege he solicited a primary opponent to circumvent campaign finance laws.
Jake Eaton, a Billings resident and political consultant advising the Knudsen campaign, called the lawsuit “disjointed and incoherent” in a letter to Montana Political Action Committee member Chris Gallus, saying it doesn’t allege any specific violations of law and should be dismissed, Eaton said.
The complaint was filed last week by the Montana Democratic Party.
This came after The Daily Montanan published an audio recording of Knudsen telling supporters that he had hired his primary opponent, Daniels County Attorney Logan Olson, to get around campaign finance laws that theoretically prohibit candidates in an uncontested primary from accepting more than a certain amount from a particular donor.
“Technically we have a primary, but he’s a young man that I asked to run against me because our election laws are ridiculous,” Knudsen told supporters at the event, according to a recording.
Eaton’s letter to the COPP did not mention the recording.
At the heart of the controversy is Montana’s election law, which allows donors to give maximum amounts to campaigns in both the primary and the general election, so long as a candidate competes in a primary. That means a candidate who faces a primary challenger can raise twice as much money as an unopposed candidate. It’s not uncommon for relatively unknown candidates to challenge well-known politicians in primaries and then not spend a cent on their own campaigns — a dynamic that at least gives the impression that the candidate is in the race to help raise money for a better-known candidate.
The Democrats’ complaints — one against Knudsen and the other against Olson — don’t dispute that arrangement, but they do highlight the fact that Olson didn’t file to run against Knudsen until March, while Knudsen was raising money for months before then as if the limit had been doubled.
Eaton’s objections to the complaint are primarily procedural: State administrative rules require campaign finance complaints to include “a detailed description of the alleged violations, including citations to each statute and/or regulation allegedly violated,” he noted.
He said the Democrats’ complaint doesn’t meet that standard.
“This requirement is important for due process because respondents to campaign finance complaints have a right to know the allegations against them so that they can formulate a meaningful response and defense to those allegations,” Eaton wrote in his letter to Gallus.
To the extent that the complaint alleges specific wrongdoings, namely that Knudsen raised impermissibly excessive campaign contributions before a primary challenger emerged, the complainant alleges that “for the first time in Montana history, [statute] “Somehow, this could be interpreted to mean that a campaign cannot accept primary or general election contributions until its primary opponent has filed with the Secretary of State,” Eaton wrote.
“Of course, that argument is absurd on its face and has no rational basis in the actual language of the law,” he continued. “Years of interpretation and practice have shown that campaigns
They would simply keep the donations for the primary and general election and return the funds if the primary election is not held.”
He added that Knudsen’s general election challenger, Ben Alke, and other Democrats also raised primary and general election contributions without a primary challenger. Alke received a $100 general election contribution from a donor who gave the same amount to his primary fund. Speaking to reporters at a news conference this week, Alke said he would return the improper contributions “in due course.”
“Sometimes people unknowingly hand over more money than is allowed,” he said.
Alke said Knudsen’s recording “is an admission that he violated campaign finance laws” and called on Knudsen to return the excess funds.
According to state administrative rules, the COPP is not required to investigate a complaint if it finds it to be “facially unfounded, illegible, unclear, does not identify the alleged violators, does not reference the statute or regulation allegedly violated,” or does not “contain sufficient allegations to enable the commissioner to determine that a statute or regulation within the commissioner’s jurisdiction may be violated.” The fact that the commissioner’s office accepted the complaint suggests that there are at least no significant technical or jurisdictional problems with the complaint itself.
Olson has yet to respond to the complaints leveled against him.
