Campaign finance gadfly bites unions

OLYMPIA -- With time on his hands, some computer savvy and access to vast public campaign finance databases, Bob Edelman has become a force to be reckoned with in Washington politics.

Using little-known and seldom-enforced areas of campaign finance law, he's forced campaigns to give up thousands of dollars in union contributions and prompted big fines for unions themselves. And the precedent he set could wind up costing the Washington State Republican Party millions.

In a little-known case last year, Edelman, a 65-year-old retired Boeing engineer who lives in Black Diamond, filed a complaint against dozens of campaigns -- including Gov. Gary Locke's -- which had taken contributions from two unions that represent ferry workers up and down the West Coast.

Because the unions had failed to file the proper disclosure forms within 10 days of giving the money as required by state law, the campaigns had to forfeit the money -- about $37,000 -- to the state.

The case was the first of its kind, according to the Public Disclosure Commission. Edelman's critics contend he's using relatively minor state law violations to try to handcuff union activity.

"Anybody with enough spare time on their hands to comb through these records can dig up dirt on the people they don't like and ignore the dirt on people they do like," said David Groves, a spokesman for the Washington Labor Council.

But Edelman's influence may not stop with unions.

A recent examination by the PDC of contributions from the Republican National Committee to the Washington State Republican Party and its candidates turned up a similar lapse, prompting labor complaints of unequal treatment and pushing for forfeiture of $4.8 million in GOP cash.

"We're going to be watching closely to see how much they go after Republicans," Groves said.

Although a PDC spokesman initially said the GOP was in the clear, agency officials now say they're investigating.

All this is fine by Edelman, who says rigorous enforcement of even the smallest provisions of the campaign finance law will make the whole system cleaner.

His unpaid work as a campaign finance gadfly began in the mid-1990s, when labor groups were trying to help Democrats recapture control of the Legislature

"I had a concern with the amount of money that had been poured into the election by unions," said Edelman, who was a union engineer at Boeing before he went into management. "Is this money spent with the members' permission since this is money that's taken from their dues?"

Edelman says he thought about mounting an initiative to rein in the unions, but eventually discovered that Washington's campaign finance law -- enacted by voters in 1992 -- had the teeth he needed.

Enforcement of the law is mostly complaint-driven, because the Public Disclosure Commission doesn't have the manpower to monitor the thousands of forms that flood in during campaigns, said Susan Harris, the PDC's assistant director.

So Edelman began tracking union activity. At first he tried to goad the PDC into action informally.

"They would agree that these were things that shouldn't be, but then nothing would be done," Edelman said.

So he began to file formal complaints. When the PDC computerized its files, he acquired a copy of the database and customized it for his own purposes.

Many of his complaints go nowhere, dismissed by the PDC as invalid or inconsequential. But others have resulted in big fines or settlements, and forced unions to change their practices or at least clean up their paperwork.

"Without the Bob Edelmans of the world, what's the point of having the PDC?" asked Jami Lund of the conservative Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

At the Washington Federation of State Employees, a $15,000 fine prompted by an Edelman complaint resulted in closer monitoring of political spending, said Tim Welch, a spokesman.

"Frankly, more than the fine, it was a public embarrassment for us," Welch said.

After the fine, the federation shut down its political action committee and began filing under the less stringent rules for employers of lobbyists, a status it can claim because a relatively small fraction of its budget goes to politics. But Welch said the union's political activity hasn't fundamentally changed as a result of Edelman's work.

Edelman worked with the Evergreen Freedom Foundation in its landmark case against the Washington Education Association for using members' dues for political purposes without individual consent. The teachers union eventually paid more than $400,000 in fines, refunds and legal costs in a 1998 settlement.

In the ferry unions' case, the unions had failed to file a form required of national organizations that donate into Washington state. That prompted the forfeiture of the money, even though the individual contributions had been reported to the PDC on different forms.

Edelman has also tackled various unions for violating a law that treats a parent union and its locals as the same union for purposes of giving money to candidates. For example, he's gone after the Washington Council of Fire Fighters and its locals for giving to the same candidates amounts that add up to more than the legal limit.

"He tries to limit the authority or the ability of unions to participate in the political process," said Kelly Fox, the council's president.

Such violations rarely exceed more than a few hundred dollars, and many are caused by another PDC rule that bans parent unions and their locals from coordinating their donations, said Fox.

"You add them all up and it becomes something major," Edelman said. "My goal in this has been two things: to get the PDC to enforce the law, and then in doing so, to get the candidates and the committees to follow the law."

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