The Colorado Republican Party won the campaign finance lottery this week when it got the go ahead to form an independent expenditure committee, or Super PAC, from Second District Court Judge Robert McGahey. The ruling means the party can continue operating CORE, a Super PAC designed to “raise and spend unlimited funds to aid in electing Republican candidates.” McGahey asserted that, because Colorado state law can be interpreted to include political parties as “persons,” the parties have the right, as individuals do, to set up Super PACs in Colorado. Nonprofit campaign finance watchdog Ethics Watch intervened in the case, which the state was not actively fighting. Ethics Watch argued that no political party, Republican or Democrat, should be able to set up a Super PAC out of concern that the huge influx in campaign spending might make the candidates themselves beholden to contributors by virtue of needing a party’s endorsement to get their name on the ballot. Ethics Watch pointed to a state constitutional amendment voters passed in 2002 prohibiting both corporations and labor unions from directly supporting candidates or political parties.
Source: Colorado judge: State political parties can form Super PACs | The Colorado Independent
