It’s the same old song and it didn’t have a beat you could dance to the first time around: “The group believes the commission does not have the authority to conduct the investigation,” said NOM’s attorney of the state’s official investigating body, the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices.
That commission, on a tip from Fred Karger — the founder of Californians Against Hate, went after the National Organization for Marriage and nailed the group for clenching their tiny fists and stamping their little feet when they were told they had to comply with Maine’s election donor disclosure laws.
Anti-gay marriage group seeks end to fundraising probe
Kennebec-Journal online
AUGUSTA — The National Organization for Marriage will ask the state ethics commission Thursday to dismiss an investigation into the fundraising techniques it used prior to last year’s gay-marriage vote.
The group believes the commission does not have the authority to conduct the investigation, said Barry Bostrom, an attorney with the Indiana law firm Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom.
In October, the commission directed its staff to investigate whether the National Organization for Marriage should have registered with the state as a ballot question committee. State law says groups that raise or spend more than $5,000 trying to influence the outcome of any Maine election must register with the state and disclose their donors.
The National Organization for Marriage donated more than $1.9 million to Stand for Marriage Maine, a political action committee that helped repeal a Maine law that allowed gay and lesbian couples to marry.
NOM’s attorney is indulging in a little shell shuffling when he disingenuously claims “NOM did not raise more than $5,000 specifically for the Maine campaign but instead took money from its general operating budget to help the Maine repeal effort.”
And, of course, the organization fears its sunshine-shy, equality-hating donors will be horribly oppressed by the big bad gays like this …
I, for one, am beginning to suspect that NOM has lit too many backfires in too many states, and the flames are beginning to lick at their anti-gay assets.
