'REFORM' AND A HIDDEN AGENDA

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'REFORM' AND A HIDDEN AGENDA

By RYAN SAGER

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April 26, 2005 -- ANYONE still clinging to the notion that cam paign-finance reformers are interested in "clean government" solely for its own sake should take a look at Illinois — specifically a race for a state Supreme Court seat last year that turned into the most expensive judicial contest in U.S. history.

The race was a money magnet — with more than $9 million spent by the time the dust cleared. Why? Because tort lawyers from all over the country go to Illinois' Madison County to file lawsuits against deep-pocketed corporations. If Democrat Gordon Maag won the Supreme Court race, the trial-lawyer gravy train would probably keep on rollin'. If Republican Lloyd Karmeier won (he did), he was expected to start hitting the breaks (he has).

Money rolled in from pro- and anti-tort-reform forces around the country. And so one group appointed itself traffic cop: the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, the state's resident good-government watchdog. The "nonpartisan" group spearheaded a Tone and Conduct Committee — organized under the aegis of the state Bar Association — aimed at keeping advertising by outside interests to a minimum.

The media bought this charade hook, line and sinker, referring to the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform as "nonpartisan" and the Tone and Conduct Committee as "independent."

In fact, the group has extensive ties to the trial-lawyer lobby. That fact was only brought to light this year, in a report from the business-funded, pro-tort-reform Illinois Civil Justice League. How does the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform answer that evidence? "Our work speaks for itself," says Cindi Canary, the group's executive director. (She also says ICPR reaches out to Republicans, Democrats, business and labor.)

But out of three senior staffers listed on the group's Web site, two have extensive ties to trial lawyers. The assistant director, David Morrison, used to work for the Coalition for Consumer Rights, a typical "consumer" group opposed to tort reform. The project manager of ICPR's Judicial Campaign, Mary Schaafsma, has been affiliated for almost two decades with a group, Illinois Citizen Action, that is funded by trial lawyers and also aggressively opposes tort reform.

Now, lucky for Illinois businesses who wanted a voice in this election, there wasn't very much the clean-government posers — call them "cleanies" — could do this time around to shut them up: Illinois has virtually no regulation of the money that can fund political speech.

The best the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform could do was use its Tone and Conduct Committee — an innovation since the Democrats lost a Supreme Court race in 2002 — to try to delegitimize all independent advertising.

But the cleanies have grander plans in mind. Specifically, they're lobbying for the state Legislature to ban all corporate and union contributions in all elections in Illinois and set up public financing of judicial elections.

"I think they would like to cut anybody out of the debate who disagrees with their agenda," says Edward Murnane, the president of the Illinois Civil Justice League.

To bolster his case, he points to the liberal foundation funding behind the Illinois Campaign Reform Coalition, an umbrella group in the state lobbying for sweeping restrictions on political speech. That funding is detailed in another report just released by his group.

It turns out that the eight groups under the umbrella (ICPR, the Sunshine Project, the Citizen Advocacy Center, Protestants for the Common Good, the Better Government Association, Common Cause Illinois, Illinois Public Interest Research Group and the League of Women Voters of Illinois) have received about $3 million in grants from George Soros' Open Society Institute and the Joyce Foundation since 1997.

Those names should sound familiar to anyone who has followed the unmasking of the campaign-finance lobby at the national level. They are two of the eight liberal foundations that spent more than $120 million between 1994 and 2004 to fake up a "grass-roots movement" to pass the McCain-Feingold law, defend it in court and lobby for further restrictions on political speech.

These state groups are part of the same effort to restrict all political speech deemed unworthy of a hearing by a cadre of liberal foundations.

These groups exist in nearly every state. And just as at the federal level, they get almost no scrutiny from the press. "The news media in Illinois have not really done the kind of reporting that shows who's playing this game," says Murnane.

"They accuse us of being a front for big business . . . we don't hide from that," he says, referring to his group's business backing. "They're hiding, pretending they're somebody that they're not." As in neutral, nonpartisan.

If politics is war by other means, then campaign-finance reform is politics by other means. The funders of campaign-finance reform have a political agenda — as shown by the other groups they support: These foundations also fund the Earth Action Network, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, the Public Citizen Foundation . . . and they oppose tort reform.

And God bless 'em!

Any person, company, foundation or union should be able to spend money supporting or opposing anything he, she or it wants.

But what shouldn't be tolerated is a war on speech by people who just want to shut up their opponents.

That's what the cleanies are trying to do — nationally, and in states like Illinois. Unless the public and the press become more vigilant when it comes to following the money behind these efforts, free speech may just lose another battle.

email: rsager@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/45309.htm