THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

It may well happen. Their anonymous donor supported SuprPAC got involved in a state race in Nevada recently. Unlike Federal law, Nevada does not split hairs as to how you attack a candidate to influence the election.

In a complaint filed Thursday, the Nevada Democratic Party asked Secretary of State Ross Miller to investigate whether the nonprofit organization must report the contributions it received to fund mailers attacking state Senate candidate Kelvin Atkinson, a Democratic assemblyman from North Las Vegas.

Under federal law, political nonprofits such as AFP can escape disclosure requirements by not including words such as “vote for” or “defeat” in political messaging.

Under state law, it doesn’t matter whether those words are used or not.

If there can be “no other reasonable interpretation” than that the ad seeks the election or defeat of a candidate, then the producer must disclose the funding source for the ad...

In this case, AFP sent mailers into Atkinson’s district just before the June 6 primary election, with his picture and accusations that he worked for special interests and sought a $1 billion electricity rate increase.

The mailers didn’t say “vote against” Atkinson; rather, they urged voters to call his office and tell him what they thought of his record.

But Miller has aggressively enforced the concept in Nevada that such mailers are clearly designed to influence an election and that the money associated with producing them should be reported.

He’s filed suit against an out-of-state group that spent money attacking former Gov. Jim Gibbons in his 2010 primary against Brian Sandoval, and he filed a civil complaint against Citizens Outreach for failing to report contributors that funded a similar attack mailer against Assemblyman John Oceguera.

Miller also succeeded in passing legislation last year to strengthen the definition of what constitutes political advertising.

So far the Koch have managed to drag this out in courts, but that does not mean they will win, just that we may not learn who the donors are in time.