The conservative, free-market nonprofit American Future Fund announced the release of attack ads to run in Florida and Wisconsin, battlegrounds for control of the U.S. Senate.

In Florida, Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson is facing $1.9 million in outside spending from conservative independent spending groups, which favor Rep. Connie Mack, R-Fla., according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

In Wisconsin, Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin faces former Gov. Tommy Thompson, who won a hotly contested Republican primary and is vying to replace retiring Democrat Herb Kohl. Even before the primary concluded, Baldwin faced a slew of attack ads from conservative super PAC Club for Growth Action and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

American Future Fund’s “1979” attacks Nelson’s tenure, noting “Bill Nelson’s been in Washington since 1979.”

Well, not quite. Nelson was a member of the House from 1979 to 1991, when he ran for governor. He then won election as insurance commissioner and served until 2000 when he won his Senate seat.

“What’s he done in more than a third of a century?” the narrator asks. “Not a balanced budget but a $2 trillion health care law and $15 trillion more in debt.”

The anti-Baldwin ad takes a lighter approach, featuring the state flag. The flag features illustrations of a miner and a sailor who represent Wisconsin’s connection to both land and sea. The two come to life in an animated feature discussing Baldwin’s votes for “big spending bills.”

“I’m going to call Tammy Baldwin and tell her to stop spending away our children’s future,” the sailor decides.

The American Future fund is a nonprofit organization and won’t reveal its donors; however some sources of its income are known.

For example, American Justice Partnership, also a nonprofit, gave the group $2.4 million in 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The group says it is a “legal reform group” that “stands up to greedy trial lawyers.”

American Justice Partnership has teamed up with numerous conservative nonprofits including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Center for Individual Freedom, the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, according to its website.

The group is a vehement opponent of liberal financier George Soros* and has been tied to alleged voter suppression laws.

American Justice Partnership was founded by the National Association of Manufacturers, according to the Daily Beast, and has received significant funding from Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Issues Mobilization Inc., according to that group’s tax filing and first reported by RepublicReport.org, a website that investigates the corrupting influence of money in politics. WMC Issues Mobilization Inc. is also a nonprofit and does not release its donors.

Among some of the other funders of American Future Fund:

• The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) gave the group $300,000 in 2010 according to a Center for Public Integrity report.
• Bruce Rastetter, founder and CEO of Hawkeye Energy Holdings, provided seed money in 2008, according to The New York Times. Rastetter has given at least $253,000 to Republican political candidates and committees since 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Rastetter and his company, like the American Future Fund, are based in Iowa.
• The Center to Protect Patients’ Rights gave $11.7 million in 2011, according to Center for Responsive Politics. This group is also a nonprofit, so it is unknown where its money comes from. An investigation by CRP concluded that the group is cloaked in “layers of anonymity.” Its director Sean Noble was described as a “Koch operative” by Politico, referring to conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

The American Future Fund has spent more than $234,000 on campaign activity this election cycle, according to CRP. The group was founded by Nick Ryan, once campaign advisor to former Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, and it is run by Sandra Greiner, a Republican Iowa state senator and farmer.

The group has been the subject of complaints made to the IRS and the Federal Election Commission for not disclosing its donors.

In other outside spending news:

• “Small-Minded” from Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting President Barack Obama, goes after GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on his taxes. Romney proclaimed he has never paid less than 13 percent, but the ad claims that under the plan of his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, millionaires would pay only 1 percent. The ad features Romney and Ryan inside a hand-drawn heart.
• Women Vote!, the super PAC affiliated with EMILY’s List, an abortion rights organization, criticizes former Wisconsin Gov. Thompson for being a “Washington insider” in the ad “Riding High.”
• The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hits North Carolina state Sen. David Rouzer, a Republican, with a new attack ad. Rouzer is running for Congress in a competitive race against Democratic Rep. Mike McIntyre.
• The Republican National Committee spent $3.3 million on advertisements opposing Obama.
• Friends of the Majority, a conservative super PAC, spent $230,000 opposing Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., who is running for election in the state’s 6th district. Schweikert, who has the support of the tea party, faces Ben Quayle in Arizona’s GOP primary on August 28. More than half of the super PAC’s contributions have come from out of state, including from GOP super donor Foster Friess.
• The National Republican Congressional Committee spent $635,000 on media buys opposing Democratic Reps. John Barrow of Georgia, Mark Critz of Pennsylvania, Ben Chandler of Kentucky and Mike McIntyre of North Carolina.
• Conservative Majority Fund spent $119,000 on voter telephone calls nationwide in opposition to Obama.

*The Center for Public Integrity has received financial support from Soros’s Open Society Foundation. See the Center’s list of donors here.

Around the country, 36 secretaries of state also serve as their state’s chief election official. They come from diverse professional and political backgrounds, differ on endorsing candidates while in a nonpartisan office, and are making more headlines as election systems in many states are being changed.

Click to view the full interactive.

Foster parent Jenae VanEvery got a call around midnight one day in September 2011 asking if she could take in two sisters — ages 2 and 3 — who had been found living in filth and squalor by Lincoln, Neb. police.

The children were in the custody of the non-profit group KVC, one of the private contractors the state of Nebraska had hired after deciding in 2009 to privatize its child welfare system. VanEvery agreed but said she could not pick up the children until the next afternoon.

When VanEvery and her husband arrived to pick up the children, they were sleeping in a back room – still wearing the urine- and-feces-covered clothing they had on when police took them the day before.

“When we walked in, the 3-year-old woke up and jumped into my arms. I was taken aback by the strong aroma coming from her. It made my eyes water, and it was hard to breathe,” VanEvery said. “When we arrived home, we took them straight to the bathroom.  The 3-year-old had a cable-knit sweater … that … had rubbed her shoulder blades raw because it had become so saturated in urine and feces that it dried incredibly stiff and rough.

“Her shoes were covered in feces — inside and out,” VanEvery said. “My husband took the clothes straight to the clothes washer, and I started giving them a bath.  I had to change the water twice.”

It apparently had been so long since the children were bathed that “they freaked out when I turned the water on,” she said. “This was very scary for them.”

As it was for VanEvery: How, she thought, could caseworkers allow the girls to remain so filthy while in their care?

A Public Failure

VanEvery told her story last January during a series of hearings before the Nebraska Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee — the beginning of the end of Nebraska’s largely failed experiment to privatize its ailing child welfare system.

Nebraska isn’t the only state to try privatizing its child welfare system. Florida and Kansas, to differing degrees, launched such efforts in the recent past. But the Nebraska experiment serves as a cautionary tale for any public system considering outsourcing, especially those dealing with the welfare of vulnerable people.

Privatization is the change of public or government services to a private enterprise — a company or non-profit. The shift of public services to the private sector has been under review for the last 20-plus years, stemming from an assumption that private companies can help governments save or make money by doing jobs better or more efficiently. But as the Nebraska exercise showed, privatization isn’t a magic solution in and of itself.

Across the board, lawmakers, foster parents and child advocates now say Nebraska’s privatization effort failed because it was ill-conceived, rushed, and inadequately funded. They also say often the caseworkers hired by the private companies had caseloads that were too heavy and in many cases did not have enough training to deal with the complexities of the welfare system.

Said state Sen. Heath Mello of Omaha: “Ultimately, the ... initiative failed because there was never a strategic plan serving as the blueprint on how to reform the system … The entire episode became an experiment on what not to do when trying to reform state government.”

Gail Steen, a Lincoln attorney who has served as a guardian ad litem, told lawmakers that it would take a lot of money to fix things. “We have to figure out a different way of doing the same thing,” she said. “I think it’s ridiculous to call it reform when we’re doing the exact same thing with just different people. That’s not a reform; it’s just a burden shift. We have to figure out how we’re going to do it differently.”

Moving Around Deck Chairs

When Nebraska began its grand experiment to shift much of the responsibility for running its ailing child-welfare system to private contractors in June 2009, state officials hoped the plan would enhance the efficiency and accountability of child welfare services while controlling costs.

It didn’t.

In fact, the whole thing was such a dismal failure that state lawmakers passed a sweeping package of bills earlier this year aimed at fixing the system.

State Sen. Kathy Campbell of Lincoln, who chairs the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, condemned the privatization effort as lawmakers stepped in. “The state of Nebraska has the legal responsibility for children in its custody,” she said. “The state cannot contract away this responsibility.”

But as Sen. Campbell and her colleagues were still hammering out the details of that child welfare legislation, Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, issued a report describing Nebraska’s efforts as “moving around the deck chairs” on a sinking ship.

Wexler blasted Nebraska for removing children from their homes at more than twice the national rate:  7.5 per 1,000 children in 2010, compared to the national average of 3.4 removals. Wexler said that lawmakers and others should have been addressing that issue before debating whether the state should continue using private contractors for its child welfare system. 

Wexler said children do better with their own families than in foster care. But instead of helping families deal with the issues of poverty and substandard living conditions, he said Nebraska was using a “take the child and run mentality.”

Of all the children in foster care in Nebraska in 2010, 19 percent were there because of allegations of physical abuse—from excessive corporal punishment to torture, Wexler said. Seven percent were in care because of sexual abuse.

But 58 percent were in care because of what was categorized as “neglect.”

“What is “neglect?” Wexler asked. “In Nebraska, it‘s the failure of the parent to provide for the basic needs or provide a safe and sanitary living environment for the child. A definition that broad can include some extremely serious maltreatment — such as, say, deliberately starving a child, or locking him in a closet all day.

“But it also is a perfect definition of poverty,” Wexler said. “And the confusion of poverty with neglect is the single biggest problem in American child welfare.”

“Either Nebraska is a cesspool of depravity, with more than triple the child abuse of the nation as a whole, or Nebraska is tearing apart a whole lot of families needlessly,” Wexler said.

Carolyn Rooker, executive director of the advocacy group Voices for Children in Nebraska, said: “Out-of-home care is necessary in some cases of child maltreatment, but data suggest it has long been overused in Nebraska,” she said. “Out-of-home care is a scary place for kids, and it should be used only in those cases when it is absolutely necessary,” Rooker said.

Child welfare experts cite several reasons for the high rate of child protective services in Nebraska. Advocates say the state has historically spent far more money on children after their removal from their homes than on prevention and family preservation. 

Also, many say, a Nebraska law that gives only law enforcement personnel and the courts the authority to remove a child from a home may help explain the high rate of removals.

Problems Not New

Nebraska’s child welfare woes didn’t start with privatization. The problems festered for decades.

Some 10 years before the 2012 Legislature passed the series of measures prompted by the privatization mess, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a report saying, among other things, that Nebraska failed to achieve “substantial conformity” with any of the seven safety, permanency and well-being measures for kids in its care.

In 2003, a task force created by then-Gov. Mike Johanns released a report that addressed caseworker workload and retention issues. The next year, Johanns signed legislation that included $5.5 million to help pay for 120 additional social services workers.

But Nebraska continued to have one of the highest rates of U.S. children in out-of-home care. And in 2006, Johanns’ successor, current Gov. Dave Heineman, announced a series of Health and Human Services (HHS) System directives targeting the state’s management of foster children and other state-ward cases.

Meanwhile, New York-based Children’s Rights and the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest sued the state, claiming that the governor’s recommendations lacked specificity and commitment to secure money needed to fix the system.

The lawsuit, which said HHS endangered the 6,000 children in the foster-care system and was “mismanaged, overburdened and under-funded,” was later dismissed by a judge, who cited precedent saying the federal courts should not interfere with the action of state courts. Children in foster care are involved in ongoing state court cases, he said.

“This decision consigns Nebraska’s most vulnerable children to an empty promise that the courts will protect them,” Appleseed lawyer Jennifer Carter said at the time.

Before it was dismissed, the lawsuit prompted Gov. Heineman to issue directives to improve the child welfare system — focusing on decreasing the length of time children spend in the system by achieving permanent placements faster — particularly for young children — and freeing up resources to allow workers more time to focus on high-priority cases.

Several months after issuing the directives, Gov. Heineman said there had been “dramatic progress” in the child welfare system, adding that the number of state wards had gone from a record 7,803 in April to 7,603 in July.

“I do not expect this to be an overnight success, and there may well be bumps along the way,” he said. “I am, however, pleased to see progress beginning to take shape.”

But in December 2006, a report by the HHS Office of Protection and Safety said that the caseloads for child welfare workers were still too high — despite the addition of 120 social services workers in 2004. The report said that average caseloads fell from about 129 percent above state standards in 2004 to about 114 percent in 2005.

And while state’s Foster Care Review Board said in early 2007 that Nebraska had made “huge progress” in reducing the number of children in foster care, the board’s executive director said the state could not achieve true reform of the foster care system without spending more money.

Change at the Top

A few months later, Gov. Heineman restructured HHS, a process which included the creation of a Division of Children and Family Services. He appointed Todd Landry, CEO of the Child Saving Institute in Omaha, to head the division.

“We are going to have to make some significant changes,” Landry said.

In December 2007, a Children’s Behavioral Health Task Force, comprised of legislators, HHS officials and child advocates, released a report that set goals to improve the system, including going from 7,000 state wards with 70 percent in out-of-home care to 5,000 state wards with 70 percent in in-home care by 2011. It also supported a reduction of out-of-home and out-of-state placements of children, and called for developing a uniform system to collect and analyze data regarding youth served, the quality of services, and outcomes.

But advocates said this new plan lacked specificity on how to actually fix things.

Kathy Bigsby Moore, co-founder of the advocacy group Voices for Children of Nebraska, said at the time: “My big concern is that much of this continues to be focused on guiding principles and values, rather than getting down to the street level and saying, ‘This is how this is going to roll out.’”

HHS spokeswoman Kathie Osterman said Nebraska didn’t suddenly decide to privatize child welfare. She said that HHS has always contracted with the private sector for direct services for state wards and their families rather than providing the services directly.

However, in 2008 and 2009, Landry moved HHS from individual service contracts with more than 100 providers to a “lead agency model” with five contractors responsible for the delivery and coordination of services instead of the state. The lead agencies then subcontracted with the other private providers to provide a continuum of services.

Trouble out of the Chute

The contracts began in November 2009. And before six months were out, one contractor was bankrupt and another ended its contract. Both blamed inadequate reimbursement from the state. Shortly after that, a third company lost its contract because of financial and management problems, which forced HHS to make unplanned infusions of money to keep things going.

An analysis by the Legislative Fiscal Office later showed that the state overspent the amount budgeted for child welfare services by $50 million during the two-year budget period – with all the money going into the private contracts.

Things got worse.

A few months before the 2012 legislative session, State Auditor Mike Foley issued a scathing 152-page report on the privatization effort, saying the state spent millions more than expected and failed to provide accountability for the costs of the new system.

Foley said that from the outset, HHS had touted its “Families Matter” reform effort as a way to increase the efficiency and accountability of the child welfare system—without increasing spending. But Foley said child welfare costs skyrocketed under Family Matters, jumping 27 percent—from $108 million in 2009 to $137 million in 2011.

HHS said the money being spent was necessary and reasonable, but Foley said the agency lacked accountability, mainly by not having adequate documentation. No documentation was provided by HHS, for example, to support the spending of $7 million in start-up costs, given to lead agencies involved in privatization.

Lawmakers Step In

State lawmakers began the 2012 session in January, promising that it would be the “year of the children.” And the HHS Committee soon held public hearings on child welfare reform.

During a hearing on the bill (LB961) that would eventually return control of foster care case management from private contractors to the state, Sen. Campbell said that children, especially those who are victims of abuse and neglect, “should have stability, continuity, and the absolute best system the state can construct to ensure safety and provide permanency for them.

“The current lead agency model of contracting for private case managers for children is always 90 or 60 days away from massive change. The circumstances the state is currently in is the result of a process entered into by the department with the lead agency model with no strategic plan, experiencing subsequently one major change or crisis after another,” Campbell said.

Campbell cited statistics that showed how permanency substantially drops with each case manager that a child has. In one study, children with one case manager achieve permanency in 74.5 percent of the cases. However, for children with two or more case managers, it drops to 17.5 percent, and for children who have six or more caseworkers, the rate of permanency is 0.1 percent.

The Nebraska Foster Care Review Board said that in the first six months of 2011, 21 percent of the children in the state’s care had four or more case managers. In a survey of biological parents, 60 percent reported they had had between two and four caseworkers, and 9 percent said they had between five and 10 caseworkers.

Compelling Testimony

At the January HHS hearing, Brandi Conner, a former state ward who worked for KVC, testified that while she herself was in Nebraska’s foster-care system from 1992 to 2002 — long before privatization began — she moved 10 times, lived in three foster homes and “had more workers than I could count.”

Conner also said case workers did not check up on how she was doing in foster care. She said one home in which she was placed was filthy with dog feces and that she often was made to take care of four younger children in the home.

Foster mother Lorrie Palmer told lawmakers that while the child welfare system had always had problems, “I’ve seen even more implosion of the system since privatization.”

“Privatization of foster care was an attempt to take the burden off our state workers,” Palmer said. “Instead, untrained, unskilled, poorly paid workers have been left to manage our state wards. Privatization has left our state wards victimized by the very people [who] were supposed to protect them.”

Betty Nisly, who has been a foster parent on and off since 1980, told lawmakers that KVC “appears overwhelmed with case overload and poor management.

“Contact with KVC case managers is close to nil. Except for court hearings, there is no contact,” she said. “They do not answer their phones. Their messages are overflowed, so they can’t accept a message on their phone, and foster care parents are left dangling in midair.”

Palmer shared a Facebook post from one of her former foster children, a 15-year-old girl: “Just moved into a new foster home, and I’m scared. Don’t know what to do. Give me some advice.”

Another post said: “I’m lost. I don’t know who to turn to … I was just getting comfortable in my foster home when they took me out of it. It seems like nothing is going to be able to go right, and I’m just going to move from place to place until I turn 18.”

After some four months of hearings and debate, lawmakers passed a sweeping overhaul of the system. The package of child welfare reform bills that passed created:

• Children’s Commission and Inspector General for child welfare (LB821)
• Requirement for more transparency and reporting on child welfare spending, financial benchmarks, a strategic plan and a separate child welfare budget (LB949)
• Plan for a web-based, statewide automated child welfare information system (LB1160)
• Increases in foster parent payments, licensing changes and a requirement that the state HHS apply for a federal foster care demonstration project (LB820)
• Requirement to bring case management in most of the state under HHS and put caseload standards in place (LB961).

Gov. Heineman also signed a related bill (LB998) that eliminated the 11-member state Foster Care Review Board and created a five-member committee to work in tandem with the foster care review office.

Said Campbell: “The package of bills is a foundation, but we should know more as monitoring continues and the components of the package are fully implemented.”

Lessons Learned

Voices for Children’s Rooker said many lessons were learned in the failed privatization effort.

“It’s important that the whole diverse group of child welfare system stakeholders have consensus around what improvements need to be made and how to do that,” she said, adding that real reform takes time, systemic change and new ways of thinking and acting.

She said such reform requires stakeholders to “really challenge the status quo.”

Looking back, HHS’ Osterman said the agency probably tried to do “too much too quickly” with privatization. She said that implementing  privatization statewide rather than in stages or pilots also was a mistake and that lead contractors may have underestimated challenges and costs.

“We’ve learned it’s important to realize business may need to be done differently in rural and urban areas,” she said.

Said Sen. Campbell: ‘’Through the … process ... it was made clear that child welfare reform is bigger than privatization. Privatization is a tool. It is not a child welfare reform.”

At Home in Lincoln

Almost a year has passed since that midnight emergency call in September 2011 when Jenae VanEvery and her husband were asked to pick up the two sisters who were living in such a wretched condition. 

The state has abandoned its grand experiment in privatizing child welfare and tried to set itself on a path of improvement, and the VanEvery’s have grown their family.

On a recent spring day in Lincoln, Jenae VanEvery was busy playing with her sons, Noah and Zane, on the swing set in their backyard. Joining the boys was their new little brother.

Until recently, Josiah was a foster child, a ward of the state of Nebraska. Today, he is the legally adopted son of the VanEverys.

Kevin O’Hanlon covers the Nebraska Legislature and state government for the Lincoln Journal Star. This story was produced in collaboration with YOUTHtoday and the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange.

So-called “model workplaces” that won exemptions from regular inspections will now face greater scrutiny, amid concern over deaths and safety breakdowns at some plants held up as industry leaders.

A report suggesting reforms, from a task force of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, comes more than a year after a Center for Public Integrity series revealed that deadly accidents and serious safety violations at these sites had gone largely unpunished by OSHA.

The report about the agency’s Voluntary Protections Programs, known as VPP, recommends that OSHA overhaul its policies for responding to serious accidents at these sites. Regional officials should thoroughly re-evaluate sites that have such problems, the report said, and they should have broader authority to kick out problem workplaces. The agency also should suspend sites while investigations are ongoing, the report recommended.

"This report will serve as a valuable road map for the agency as we continue to address issues present in VPP," Jordan Barab, OSHA's No. 2 official, said in a statement. "In general, we agree with most of the findings of the report, and have already or will be implementing a number of substantive changes to the program based on the recommendations included."

The association representing companies in the “model workplace” program is holding its annual conference in Anaheim, Calif., and no one from the organization could be reached for comment Monday.

The task force, composed almost entirely of regional and local OSHA officials, identified muddled guidance, inaccurate data and regional inconsistencies that have led to problems within the program.

As the Government Accountability Office has noted, OSHA lacks evidence detailing the program’s effectiveness. The task force acknowledged as much, suggesting ways the agency could better gather information on sites in the program.

The report also suggests OSHA should consider abandoning the initiative known as “VPP Corporate,” which allows certified companies to receive streamlined evaluations at all their sites.

One Center story highlighted the initiative and its second participant, the U.S. Postal Service. At the same time one OSHA branch was approving large numbers of postal service sites into VPP, the agency’s enforcement branch was alleging widespread safety problems at all mail processing centers nationwide – an approach one former OSHA official called “schizophrenic.”

The task force’s report is not the final look at VPP: The Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General announced earlier this year that it would also look into the program.

Weeks before the March primary, Aurelia Pucinski looked like a shoe-in for a 10-year seat on Illinois’ highest court.

Polls published in the Chicago Sun-Times had her up by 20 points a month before the Democratic primary. The daughter of a famous Illinois congressman, she also had great name recognition — a rarity in judicial races.

But days before the election, mailers began appearing all over Cook County, calling her unqualified and “anti-choice.” Pucinski says she could not address the charge — the state judicial code of conduct prohibits candidates from commenting on an issue that may come before the court.

The tide turned in a week. Instead of cruising to an easy victory, Pucinski lost by 28 points.

The mailers were not paid for by any of her opponents. Instead, they were funded by Personal PAC, an abortion rights group that has had a hand in Illinois politics since 1978. Personal PAC spent $200,000 on ads to make sure its favored candidate, Justice Mary Jane Theis, remained on the bench.

“I lost dirty, and that troubles me,” Pucinksi said.

Thirty-nine states elect at least some of their judges, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The vast majority of cases in the country are heard by elected judges.

Unlike non-judicial candidates, anyone who runs for judge must limit the subjects they can talk about. Illinois, like most states, prohibits a judicial candidate from making statements that “commit or appear to commit the candidate” to an issue that may come before them while on the bench.

Outside spending groups do not operate under the same rules. And thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, such groups can accept unlimited donations from wealthy individuals, corporations and labor unions and use the money to attack or support a candidate. The decision essentially invalidated laws that limited outside spending groups in 24 states, including Illinois.

Personal PAC was not an independent expenditure group, also known as a "super PAC," at the time, though it did form one later. But in Illinois, the contribution limits are so high — PACs can accept $50,000 per year from corporations and $10,000 per year from individuals — that they can make a near super PAC-level impact. 

By way of comparison, a federal candidate can accept $2,500 per election from an individual and corporate donations are banned. PACs that make contributions to candidates can accept up to $5,000.

Theis’ campaign manager says high ratings and key endorsements propelled her to victory late in the race. Theis had been appointed to the state Supreme Court a year-and-a-half before the race. She was endorsed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the Cook County Democratic Party and the Chicago Tribune.

But Pucinski blames Personal PAC’s attack for the sudden reversal.

Enjoying a comfortable early lead in the four-candidate race, Pucinski voluntarily capped donations to her campaign from businesses to $500 and from attorneys to $75 and refused to ask for endorsements from single-issue groups like Personal PAC.

With these self-imposed limits in place, her campaign took in just over $30,000 and attracted no outside spending.

Theis took a different tack. She raked in more than $1.1 million thanks to fundraisers held by state Democrats including Emanuel and spent campaign funds on ads touting her endorsements. Theis declined to comment for this story.

She told the Chicago Tribune days before the race that she had reached out to a number of groups for support, but that her endorsements would not undermine the integrity of the courts.

”People understand political campaigns are the way some judges are chosen,” she said.

A week out, polling from the Theis campaign put her and Pucinksi neck and neck. Then, Personal PAC launched its attack. The funds went to mailers, barraging Democratic women in the Cook County area with the claim that Pucinski was an “anti-choice” candidate.

Pucinski held a press conference days before the election to decry the big spending by Personal PAC, but was mum on the “anti-choice” charge, due, she says, to the code of conduct for judicial candidates.

The claim appears to be rooted in a 1993 Chicago Tribune story. Pucinski said she didn’t “believe in abortion as a method of birth control” but would not make an attempt to stop abortions in Cook County. She says she has since refused to express her personal views on the topic.

Despite Pucinski’s nearly two decades of silence on abortion, Terry Cosgrove, CEO of Personal PAC, stands behind the group’s position in the primary.

“[Pucinski] spent her entire career trying to hide her anti-choice and anti-birth control stance,” he said.

In the end, Cosgrove and Pucinski do agree on one thing — Personal PAC had a major influence on the primary. Cosgrove says that Personal PAC’s mailers “educated hundreds of thousands of voters on her record.”

Pucinski says they cost her the election and allowed Theis to remain on the bench.

At the time of the election fight, Personal PAC’s legal team was a securing a different kind of victory — this one in the federal courts.

Prior to 2011, Illinois imposed few, if any, limits on contributions. Reforms came following indictments of former Govs. George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich on federal corruption charges. The state legislature took action and capped campaign donations to guard against the quid-pro-quo system that had become synonymous with Chicago politics.

The Supreme Court race was one of the first under the new law.

Personal PAC moved to have those limits thrown out. Citing the Citizens United case, the group challenged the state’s contribution limits to independent expenditure groups. It won. A day later the organization created “Personal PAC Independent Committee,” the state’s first super PAC, and began raking in donations. Despite the court victory, it did not spend any super PAC money on the Supreme Court race.

For judicial races this year, that’s not likely to be the case.

In the 2012 election, 19 states have contestable state Supreme Court elections. Ten of those states — Alabama, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas and West Virginia — had their laws banning corporate and/or union contributions to outside spending groups tossed out.

Next up for Personal PAC and Theis is the general election, where she is heavily favored. She will face Circuit Judge James G. Riley, who ran unopposed in the Republican primary.

State Sen. Dan Duffy, R-Lake Barrington, who faced attacks by Personal PAC three years ago, said a super PAC will make Personal PAC CEO Terry Cosgrove more intimidating to candidates who face the pro-choice organization.

“Now that he’s [got] a super PAC, he’s even more powerful than before,” Duffy said.

A number of activist secretaries of state are dramatically changing a once non-partisan job that involves supervising elections.

Some have supported partisan legislation. Some have endorsed or advised their party’s candidates. In 36 states, the secretary of state also holds the title of chief election official.

The most aggressive of this new group are Republicans Kris Kobach, 46, of Kansas and Scott Gessler, 47, of Colorado.

They have been leaders in efforts to enact strict voter registration requirements in Kansas and to purge voting rolls in Colorado. Both say they want to stop voter fraud while critics, including Democrats and civil rights groups, say the measures would suppress voting.

Kobach and Gessler also have used their offices to endorse statewide and federal candidates. While Gessler endorsed Mitt Romney, Kobach said he’s an informal immigration adviser to the presidential candidate’s campaign.

However, Romney campaign regional press secretary Alison Hawkins told News21, that Kobach isn’t an adviser to the campaign on any issues, either formally or informally.

Kobach and Gessler aren’t alone.

Secretaries of State Brian Kemp of Georgia and Matt Schultz of Iowa, both Republicans, have supported voter ID legislation. All the states that have passed ID laws have Republican-majority legislatures except Rhode Island, which had a Democratic majority in 2011 when its law passed with bipartisan support.

Arizona’s Republican Secretary of State Ken Bennett added to the birther debate, largely tea party-driven, when he threatened to remove President Barack Obama’s name from the general election ballot unless Hawaii sent him the president’s birth certificate.

Bennett has since received it and apologized if he offended anyone.

Kobach and Gessler, more than others, are changing the role of a state’s election officer.

Kobach has been involved in national Republican politics since 2001 when he was chief immigration adviser to then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

He went on to write S.B. 1070, Arizona’s contentious anti-immigration law. Three of four parts of that law were rejected in June by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gessler addressed the Republican $250-a-plate Lincoln Day Dinner in Denver in June about voter fraud, saying, “People on the left say it doesn’t exist … but I’m from Chicago originally, where they used to say, ‘Vote early and vote often.’”

“In Denver, there are lots of unaffiliates (independents), there are lots of Democrats,” said Gessler. “We call it a target-rich environment. We are going to win this state. We are going to do it in Denver by converting people over to our banner, our point of view.”

Trey Grayson, who was Kentucky’s Republican secretary of state from 2004-2011, said he “cringes” today at partisan comments by Republican secretaries of state.

“I was a very proud Republican, but I was very cognizant of the fact that people needed to be able to trust elections,” said Grayson, who now directs the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

“So I tried to remember that in what I said, whether it was on a policy, on politics or on an individual, and always being aware of that appearance,” he added.

But Gessler believes his outspokenness is respectful to voters.

“When I say I’m a Republican and this is what I stand for, I think I’m giving people an honest choice,” Gessler said. “When people hide their party affiliation, or when people pretend there is no policy divide, pretend there is no choice here, what they’re really doing is masking what those choices are.”

Alexander Keyssar, professor of history and social policy at the Kennedy School, said the office should be nonpartisan.

“One of our many problems in the world of elections is that our election administration is generally partisan. They’re elected as members of a party. That’s how Katherine Harris could be secretary of state and state chair of Bush’s campaign simultaneously,” he said.

While serving as Florida’s Secretary of State under then-Gov. Jeb Bush, Harris was accused of partisan bias as she declared George W. Bush the winner of Florida’s electoral votes in the 2000 presidential election, a decision ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Unlike Kobach or Gessler, Harris didn’t tackle controversial public policy issues such as immigration and voter ID.

Kobach was elected as Kansas secretary of state in 2010 after a two-year stint as Republican Party chairman. He co-wrote the state’s Secure and Fair Elections Act, requiring photo ID to vote and, effective next year, proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Kobach argues he can fairly govern his state’s elections and also take strong partisan stances. While campaigning, Kobach told voters he would work on voter ID and anti-immigration legislation.

“My opponents tried to use that against me,” he said. He beat his Democratic opponent by more than 21 points.

Kobach believes “a person can be a strong Republican or a strong Democrat and still approach the administration of elections with a nonpartisan, evenhanded attitude.”

Similarly, when Gessler took office in January 2011, the Denver Post reported his intention to continue practicing law at Hackstaff Gessler LLC. His Denver-based firm “specializes in campaign and elections law and has represented a number of Republican-aligned clients,” according to the newspaper.

Colorado Common Cause and Colorado Ethics Watch, two groups that aim to hold government accountable, called this a conflict of interest.

Gessler consulted with Colorado’s Republican attorney general and then decided to leave the firm, even though he said he would have only worked on real estate cases.

“At the end of the day, it caused a lot of controversy and it really become untenable,” Gessler said.

He’s since spent significant time in the courtroom, dealing with at least 10 lawsuits. These involve handling of ballots for inactive voters, attempting to reform campaign finance in Colorado, and addressing public access to ballots.

The partisanship of secretaries of state in the role of chief election official “is an obvious conflict of interest between the essential obligation to serve all voters and their attachment to one of the major political parties,” said Daniel Tokaji, an election law professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

Currently, more Republicans than Democrats have made their secretary of state offices partisan, Grayson said. Of the 36 secretaries of state who are chief election officers, 23 are Republican and 13 are Democratic.

One outspoken, partisan Democratic secretary of state is Minnesota’s Mark Ritchie.

He grabbed the national spotlight through election recounts. Conservatives questioned Ritchie for calling Al Franken the winner of a 2008 Senate race, and two years later Mark Dayton the winner of a gubernatorial recount.

Both winning candidates are also Democrats.

Ritchie is outspoken on voting rights issues. Unlike the Republican secretaries of state, he opposes a voter ID requirement in Minnesota, saying it will disenfranchise voters and cost millions in unnecessary expenses.

Minnesota has 4,000 polling places with 30,000 election judges, Ritchie said. He downplays the influence a secretary of state has as chief election officer.

“It’s the towns that run the elections. The counties are the chief election officers and they own and control their voter list completely,” Ritchie said. “We don’t own the elections. This is why a lot of this conversation about secretaries is kind of meaningless in a way.”

Minnesota Republicans say Ritchie is trying to influence voters by renaming two proposed constitutional amendments – one requiring voters to show photo ID and the other banning same-sex marriage – on the November ballot.

The GOP legislature called the voter ID amendment “Photo Identification Required for Voting” and Ritchie retitled it, “Changes to in-person and absentee voting and voter registration; provisional ballots.”

Ritchie changed the language of the same-sex amendment from “Recognition of Marriage Solely Between One Man and One Woman,” to “Limiting the Status of Marriage to Opposite Sex Couples.”

Amendment proponents say Ritchie has changed the titles to confuse voters and help defeat the measures to benefit Minnesota Democrats.

In a country so divided along party lines, secretaries should be wary of partisan politics, said Doug Chapin, a University of Minnesota researcher and director of the Program for Excellence in Election Administration.

Jocelyn Benson, a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, who was the Michigan Democratic nominee for secretary of state in 2010, said the officeholder should be an advocate for voters.

 “So the question is are they making decisions that are in the best interest of the voters or are they simply advancing what their party’s agenda is?” said Benson, who wrote “Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process.”

To some degree, she added, the public should expect secretaries to advance their party’s political agenda. However, balance is needed in Republicans’ desire for integrity in elections and Democrats’ expectations for access to voting, said Benson.

“The challenge is to do both and to essentially make it easier to vote and harder to cheat,” she said.

In Louisiana, state law keeps some partisan politics out of the secretary’s office. Secretary of State Tom Schedler can’t endorse candidates, serve on campaign committees of candidates or make campaign contributions.

In New Mexico, Secretary of State Dianna Duran has not endorsed candidates. Her office believes it would conflict with the New Mexico Governmental Conduct Act.

Other states’ secretaries don’t endorse candidates out of personal belief. Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin, a Democrat, hasn’t endorsed a candidate since he took office in 1995.

South Dakota’s two previous secretaries of state, Chris Nelson and Joyce Hazeltine, served for a combined 24 years. Like Galvin, they personally choose to never endorse a candidate.

But in June, South Dakota Secretary of State Jason Gant, a Republican, endorsed then-Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum and South Dakota Republican state senate candidate Val Rausch.

“The operation of elections has a vast amount of laws,” Gant said. “Whether people endorse or not or do different political maneuvers, the laws we have in our state are very strong.”

Other states stay clear of partisan politics by using election boards and commissions. State election boards or commissions administer elections in 11 states and Washington D.C.

The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, for example, consists of six former judges as a nonpartisan staff. Together, they oversee the state’s elections, campaign finance, ethics and lobbying laws.

“The benefit of having a board like ours is that all of our judges are trained decision makers. They know how to weigh the evidence, how to look at the law and how to apply it,” said Reid Magney, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board public information officer.

With a partisan secretary of state, Magney said, opponents will say, “it’s because you’re a Democrat or it’s because you’re a Republican” that a decision was made.

Kobach and Gessler disagree.

They think a secretary of state who is also the chief election official means greater accountability.

“They’re not as politically accountable as a single elected official,” said Kobach of election boards.

Secretaries of state who also are the chief election officer “subject themselves to the scrutiny of voters … so you have public accountability built in,” Gessler said.

Including Kobach and Gessler, 32 secretaries serving as chief election officials are elected. Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas secretaries of state are appointed by their governors. New Hampshire’s legislature names its secretary of state.

Delaware Election Commissioner Elaine Manlove, who was appointed by a Democratic governor to a four-year term, thinks elected secretaries, who must campaign, should not alienate other parties.

“I just don’t know how you split yourself down the middle like that,” she said.

Though Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed, a 12-year veteran, has made political endorsements, he’s been praised for running elections fairly, most notably in 2004 when he oversaw the closest gubernatorial election recount in U.S. history.

Reed, a Republican, introduced two popular changes: the nation’s first top-two primary system and an all-vote-by-mail system.

“When you’re there to talk about elections, you’re there just to make the system work better, not with some partisan ax to grind, or get back at someone for something they have done before,” Reed said.

New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner runs his election system similarly. The Democrat first took office in 1976 and has since been re-elected by both Republican and Democratic legislatures.

With Reed and Gardner as possible exceptions, Tokaji calls addressing partisan election administrations the great-unfinished business of election reform.

“The past decade we have seen a lot of changes, many of them positive, but we really haven’t addressed this problem when it comes to how our elections are run,” Tokaji said.

Joe Henke was a Hearst Foundations Fellow this summer for News21.

Conservative super PACs dominated their Democratic rivals in the latest round of fundraising, according to reports from the Federal Election Commission filed Monday.

Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, brought in $7.5 million in July, finishing with an imposing $20.5 million in the bank. Top contributors include Texas homebuilder and super donor Bob Perry, who gave another $2 million.

Perry was already top donor to the group and the latest donation pushes his total to a whopping $8 million. Another major donor was the Renco Group, a family-owned investment company associated with billionaire investor Ira Rennert, which gave $1 million.

Conservative super PAC American Crossroads brought in $7.1 million finishing the month with $29.5 million in the bank. Texas mega-donor and billionaire Robert Rowling’s TRT Holdings, a private holding company that includes Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym, gave $1 million. TRT also gave $1 million to American Crossroads in February. Rowling personally gave $1 million to the super PAC in May and another $1 million in July.

Meanwhile, the Democratic super PACs didn’t fare quite as well.

Priorities USA Action, which supports President Barack Obama, brought in $4.8 million in July, a hefty total but well short of the pro-Romney group. It finished the month with $4.2 million on hand, about a fifth as much as the Restore Our Future juggernaut.

Major July contributions include $1 million from Mel Heifetz, a Philadelphia-based real estate investor involved in gay rights; $750,000 from billionaire Jon Stryker, an advocate for saving the great apes of the world and a supporter of social justice issues; and $500,000 from Anne Cox Chambers, primary owner of media giant Cox Enterprises.

Majority PAC, the Democratic super PAC aiming to elect Democrats to the U.S. Senate, took in $2.4 million in July and finished with $3.5 million on hand. Its top contributor last month was the super PAC Working for Working Americans, which gave $1 million.

House Majority PAC, the Democratic super PAC aiming to elect Democrats to the U.S. House, reported bringing in $764,000 in July. It closed the month with $4.6 million on hand. The month’s top donors include the International Association of Firefighters with $250,000 and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers with $350,000.

Former Ron Paul fan and super donor Peter Thiel gave another $1 million to the conservative super PAC Club for Growth Action. The super PAC took in $2.9 million in July and finished the month with $2.4 million.

Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade, gave Ending Spending Action Fund, the conservative super PAC he founded, $375,000. The super PAC also got a $24,000 in-kind contribution from its sister nonprofit, Ending Spending Inc., which does not disclose its donors. The super PAC brought in $400,000 in July and finished the month with $218,000.

Tea-party aligned super PAC FreedomWorks for America brought in $539,000 in July and closed the month with $1 million on hand. Its affiliated, non-disclosing nonprofit, FreedomWorks Inc., was the super PAC’s biggest contributor, providing $67,000 in in-kind contributions.

In other outside spending:

• Restore Our Future tries to refocus the presidential debate on the economy after Medicare dominated the headlines in recent weeks. The ad imagines a “Debate” between Romney and Obama on who can turn the economy around. The ad cost $10.5 million and is airing in 11 swing states, according to The Hill.
• The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spent more than $401,000 on ads opposing Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., who faces Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in November. Akin may have wrecked his campaign by remarking that “legitimate rape” rarely results in pregnancy. The GOP has withdrawn funding and lawmakers from both parties have called on him to step aside.
• Crossroads GPS, the conservative nonprofit co-founded by Karl Rove, canceled its run of ads scheduled in Missouri to support Akin’s candidacy, Politico reported.
• Majority PAC released a series of ads in Indiana, North Dakota and Ohio, states where Republicans are hoping to pick up U.S. Senate seats. “Unconstitutional” opposes tea partier Richard Mourdock in Indiana; “Sly One” opposes former Rep. Rick Berg in North Dakota and “Stocked” opposes former Ohio State Treasurer Josh Mandel.
• House Majority PAC released “Problem,” an ad opposing lawyer Keith Rothfus in Pennsylvania’s 12th District. The seat, held by Democratic Rep. Mark Critz, is considered a tossup.
• The League of Conservation Voters spent $105,000 on a series of mailers opposing former Virginia U.S. Sen. George Allen, a Republican, who hopes to win his job back.
• America’s Next Generation, a right-leaning super PAC, spent $110,000 on direct mail and telephone calls opposing Obama from Aug. 20 to Aug. 30.
• Can a father’s gaffe hurt his son’s political aspirations? Apparently the Arizona-focused National Horizon super PAC thinks so. The group created an ad reminding voters when former Vice President Dan Quayle spelled potato “potatoe.” Quayle is the father of Rep. Ben Quayle, R-Ariz., who is running for U.S. House in Arizona’s 6th District. “Q-U-A-Y-L…” the narrator in the new ad says. “…E. Almost forgot.”
• Patriot Majority, a Democratic-aligned super PAC, is kicking off a multimillion-dollar campaign against the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, Politico reports. Through Americans for Prosperity and other Koch-funded groups, the brothers plan to spend $400 million influencing the election. Patriot Majority’s campaign launches today with a $500,000 television ad buy attacking the brothers, Charles and David.

• Democrat Aurelia Pucinski, who led her opponent by 20 points a month before the Illinois Supreme Court Democratic primary, lost by 28 points after a political action committee spent $200,000 on mailers calling her “anti-choice” the week before the election.
• Personal PAC, the group responsible for the mailers, was not a super PAC at the time. However, Illinois contribution limits are so high — PACs can accept $50,000 per year from corporations and $10,000 per year from individuals — that “regular” PACs can have an impact nearing that of super PACs.
• Because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, super PACs can accept unlimited donations from wealthy individuals, corporations and labor unions and use the money to attack or support a candidate. The decision essentially invalidated laws that limited outside spending groups in 24 states, including Illinois.

Click to view the full infographic.

• One hundred sixty-five fishermen died along the East Coast from 2000-2009. That's more than anywhere else in the United States, including Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
• The U.S. Coast Guard, which regulates fishing vessels, does not have "broad authority" to inspect the boats — only "little bits and pieces of authority," according to a former U.S. House of Representatives staffer who helped write safety laws.
• The U.S. Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010 requires the Coast Cuard to inspect fishing vessels' safety equipment every two years. The law does not requre dockside inspections of the boats themselves.

Our story about dangers in the commercial fishing industry was jointly reported by the Center for Public Integrity, WBUR in Boston and NPR News. LISTEN TO THEIR STORY HERE.

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. — “Get your panic out now!”

Veteran fisherman Fred Mattera stands atop a fishing trawler at the Point Judith Harbor, seagulls squawking by and a fishy mist in the air, and instructs the seven mostly young, tattooed men standing before him to pull on life-safety immersion suits that cover them from foot to head, to zip up and plunge feet first into the water. Then two groups of fishermen interlock like centipedes and take turns paddling backward until they reach a life raft where, going smallest man first, they pull in one by one.

This is survival training, and the plunge-and-rescue dry run is meant to gird the fishermen for the real thing, which comes too often in an industry beset by a high death rate and fragile federal net of protection.

Commercial fishing is the deadliest vocation in the United States. Four years running, from 2007 to 2010, the Bureau of Labor Statistics ranked commercial fishing as the most dangerous occupation in the United States. From 2000 to 2010, the industry’s death rate was 31 times greater than the national workplace average.

And no place, a recent National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health report reveals, is more deadly for commercial fishermen than the East Coast. From 2000-2009, the NIOSH report shows, 165 fishermen died from Florida to Maine. That’s more than Alaska — 133 deaths — which had long been viewed as the most brutal place for commercial fishing but saw deaths dip amid a safety push. It’s a greater death toll than in the Gulf of Mexico, which suffered 116 deaths, or the West Coast, with 83.

The U.S. Coast Guard has been granted only spotty powers to safeguard commercial fishing vessels, and the industry, steeped in a tradition of independence on the high seas, has long resisted government intrusion. Yet some longtime fishermen from Alaska to New England agree the federal safety net has left workers vulnerable.

“This has been an industry where there just hasn’t been a vigorous pursuit of safety at the federal level,” said former congressman James Oberstar, who held fishing safety hearings in 2007 as chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

Advocates are trying to cast a new culture of safety. The immersion training in this seaside resort is one piece of a still-in-the works campaign — and, until full federal reform comes, a key ingredient to curbing losses at sea.

“Panic sets in when you don’t know what to expect,” said Mattera, who scrapped his dreams of going to law school 40 years ago when a roommate took him on a fishing boat, and who now runs a company leading safety seminars. “We’re taking that unknown out of it.”

In this tightly knit Rhode Island community, nearly everyone knows someone who died at sea.

“It’s like being a race car driver, one of those things you don’t want to talk about,” said lobster boat captain Norbert Stamps, who took part in the safety session with three crew members from his boat, the Debbie Ann.

“We were all resistant in the beginning,” he said of the hands-on drills. “You now realize this isn’t fun and games. This is really serious stuff.”

Stamps began fishing at 13 and, after more than four decades on the water, said he takes his family to services for brethren lost at sea. “I’m preparing them for the fact that someday, something might happen,” he said. “You stay at sea long enough, everything happens.”

A decade ago, Mattera tried to rescue a friend’s 22-year-old son from a fishing hold 125 miles out to sea. The Rhode Island fisherman, Steven Follet, had collapsed, apparently after poisonous gases accumulated in the hold. Airlifted to a Cape Cod hospital, he died.

“Believe me, to this day it’s haunted me,” Mattera said. “Could I have gotten there five minutes sooner? All these things: My kid’s the same age as his. I will never forget coming in, going to see the family. In their eyes I was a hero. In my eyes I was a failure.

“In the end he’s not alive, and I swore to them, promised in his legacy we would change this culture of fishery.”

At his office overlooking the docks here, Mattera keeps a small picture of Follet on the wall near his desk. “It’s always in the back of your mind,” he said.

Inspection push snagged in Congress

For decades, safety advocates and government regulators have pushed for mandatory inspections of the often decades-old boats that take to deep water to bring back scallops, fish, squid and lobster.

And for decades, Congress has stood still. Despite the strikingly high death rate among the men and women who live by the boat, the federal government has never required inspections of commercial fishing boats. The Coast Guard performs voluntary exams of safety equipment, and Congress recently acted to make those dockside reviews mandatory. But the law has yet to mandate detailed inspections of the vessels themselves.

“Fishing vessels are uninspected, so the Coast Guard doesn’t have jurisdiction to go on and look at the condition of the vessel. There’s no standards that a fishing vessel has to be built to or maintained to. That’s much different than a ferry or cargo ship,” said Jennifer Lincoln, a NIOSH epidemiologist based in Alaska who leads the agency’s Commercial Fishing Safety Research and Design Program.

“Every time there’s a vessel loss with high numbers of lives lost and the Coast Guard has done an investigation, one of the recommendations that always comes back is that these vessels should be inspected,” Lincoln said. “There’s industry push back: ‘That would be an expensive thing to do.’”

Pushing for sweeping safety changes, she said, is “like planting a tree.” The government can press for one change, and hope it sprouts into another. NIOSH can suggest reform, but has no law-writing power. That rests with Congress.

The National Transportation Safety Board has argued for vessel inspections and, in 2010, held a forum on fishing safety. “Fishermen tolerate long absences from home, inhospitable environments, and workplaces that are teeming with heavy, dangerous equipment while constantly in motion,” board member Robert L. Sumwalt III said at the hearing. “For some, the price paid is even higher: hypothermia, loss of limbs, and even death.”

From 2000 to 2010, 545 commercial fishermen died in the U.S., reported NIOSH, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than half of these deaths occurred after a vessel disaster, with boats sometimes swallowed by the sea. Another 30 percent involved fishermen falling overboard. Other deaths came from accidents on board, or while crew were diving or injured on shore.

Atlantic scallop fishermen suffered some of the highest death tolls, with a fatality rate more than 100 times the national average from 2000-2009, and some of the industry’s most notable disasters.

In December 2004, vast swells rolled the New Bedford, Mass., scalloping boat Northern Edge on its side, plunging the crew of six into frigid waters 45 miles off Nantucket. One man survived, making the Northern Edge New England’s deadliest fishing tragedy since the sinking of Gloucester, Mass.’s Andrea Gail in 1991, a case that inspired The Perfect Storm book and movie.

“I often wonder what is the true price of a pound of scallops,” fisherman Christopher Gaudiello said at the funeral for Northern Edge victims.

Mattera said the work can be brutal. “If you went scalloping for 10 days and stood in that box for 18 hours a day, day after day after day, you would not believe how fatigued you are,” Mattera said. “You cannot compare it to anything. Shuck and shuck and shuck, you would not believe the monotony. You are in constant pain. … You are bringing a steel cage swinging in the seas. Man, that stuff hits you, you are a dead man or you are breaking hands, you are cracking skulls.”

There’s a human cost to the industry push back and congressional inaction, experts say.

Richard Hiscock, a longtime marine safety advocate from Vermont who worked as a U.S. House of Representatives staffer in helping to write safety laws, said government is too often “reactive to casualties.”

Marine safety laws on the books, he said, “have been what I described as the little Dutch boy going around putting his finger in the dike,” Hiscock said. “Every time there’s a major casualty there will be a lot of hubbub and there will be an investigation to see what we can do to improve the existing statutes and plug a loophole.

“And they’ve been doing this since 1838.”

Hiscock draws a contrast between the Federal Aviation Administration, which has broad power to ensure airplanes fly safely, and the Coast Guard. “Congress has given the Coast Guard little bits and pieces of authority, not the broad authority,” he said.

The Coast Guard’s website includes a Hiscock report, “The Tragedy of Missed Opportunities,” that details failed reform attempts dating years. In 1999, a Coast Guard task force issued Living to Fish, Dying to Fish, a report citing the industry’s high casualty rate and lack of deep reform.

“Despite long-standing recognition of the serious hazards of commercial fishing, a long succession of proposed laws were not enacted,” the report concludes. “Many fishermen accept that fishing is dangerous, and lives are often lost. Many of those harvesting the bounty of our ocean frontier staunchly defend the independent nature of their profession, and vehemently oppose outside interference.”

Indeed, many fishermen have fiercely opposed government regulations — challenging, for instance, fish catch quotas some say hasten dangers at sea.

Reform’s Piecemeal Rollout

Strides have come, but slowly.

In 1988, Congress passed the Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Safety Act, requiring fishing boats to carry survival craft, personal flotation devices and other safety equipment on board.

The regulations went into effect in 1991. A year later, the Coast Guard sought authority to inspect fishing boats. Approval never came.

“Whether the industry was lobbying enough or Congress didn’t see the need for it, we just weren’t given the authority,” said Jack Kemerer, division chief of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Fishing Vessels Division.

Kemerer said the 1988 law and subsequent tweaks have helped drop death tolls from even higher numbers in the 1980s. “There have been improvements based on the law and safety programs and safety initiatives,” he said.

“But,” he added, “fishing still remains the most hazardous occupation in the country.”

In 2007, the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation held hearings, citing a string of tragedies from Alaska to Maine that had taken 22 lives in recent months.

A core of veteran fishermen, their spouses and safety advocates told the panel how they had lost friends to the seas.

“If we had regulated airline safety the same way we have regulated fishing vessel safety, all passengers on an aircraft would be issued a parachute and be trained in how to use it,” said Jerry Dzugan, executive director of the Alaska Marine Safety Education Association. “The fishing vessel safety act focuses on survivability after a vessel loss. By anyone’s definition, this is a reactive, rather than a proactive approach to casualties.”

Maine lobster fisherman Robert Baines described finding two teenage boys — aspiring fishermen — drowned in the cold April waters after their boat, inadequate for the weather conditions, capsized. One boy’s body washed ashore; Baines found the other in the water. “I will never forget that unnecessary tragedy,” he said. When the 1988 law passed, he said, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association opposed safety requirements for state registered vessels. “Times have changed,” said Baines, chair of Maine’s Commercial Fishing Safety Council.

Oberstar, then the transportation committee chair, concluded that the government needed a “much more vigorous program” and national standards to safeguard the industry.

He too draws a contrast between the FAA’s powers and those handed the Coast Guard. “Safety in aviation shall be maintained at the highest possible level, not the level industry can afford,” Oberstar said, and flights can be grounded with a mechanic’s signature. “That’s the kind of standard we need for Coast Guard inspectors.”

That standard has not come, but another reform swell passed with the U.S. Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010. Congress approved an amendment requiring the Coast Guard to examine safety equipment on commercial fishing vessels every two years.

Now, fishermen can seek voluntary examinations of their safety equipment. If they pass, they get a sticker. If they fail the so-called “No Fault Exam,” no violation is issued. Captains of failed boats do risk citation if they take to the seas and happen to be boarded by the Coast Guard. The 2007 congressional hearing, however, revealed that less than 10 percent of the commercial fishing fleet took advantage of the voluntary program.

But even that voluntary review couldn’t ensure fishermen knew how to use the equipment. “That’s like taking your car in to go in for a safety sticker, and then you get into it and you don’t buckle up and you drive down the highway,” said Rodney Avila, a New England fisherman and safety advocate.

Under the new rules, which could go into effect later this year or next, the Coast Guard will check to ensure safety equipment is up to date and boats have proper life preservers, survival suits, life rafts, flares, alarms and documentation. The Coast Guard has not yet decided what consequences would follow a failed exam — but one possibility is that the boat would not be allowed to sail.

The rules also call for enhanced training of fishermen and lay the groundwork for safety compliance programs for older or substantially changed vessels.

Still, the pending mandatory dockside exams do not call for Coast Guard inspections of the vessels themselves. That would entail a “cradle-to-grave program” in which the Coast Guard issues a certificate of inspection, re-inspects the boat every year and conducts an out of water inspection every five years.

There’s a big difference, the Coast Guard’s Kemerer said, between an exam and a fuller inspection. “Safety would certainly be improved,” he said.

To some, having equipment exams but not the vessel inspections is like checking a car’s seat belts and air bags, but never getting around to the engine and frame.

Who is to blame?

“That’s the $64,000 question,” Hiscock said. “It’s a shared responsibility. Congress has never had the courage to do it, and the industry has never pushed for it.”

Kemerer said the exam could be a step toward more extensive inspections one day. The stakes, he said, warrant it. “When a serious emergency develops … the fishermen, if they haven’t practiced getting into their life suit or how to deploy a life raft, they are facing death,” he said. “Sometimes you only have a matter of minutes.”

Still, a question begs: If inspections came, who would pay for them in an industry with approximately 20,000 federally documented fishing boats and some 50,000 state registered vessels?

“We’re talking about hundreds of inspectors that would be needed, but right now with the budget climate the way it is, there’s no way we could get the number of inspectors,” said Kemerer. “It would be great to have it. The challenge would be: How do we accomplish it?”

Hiscock, the former House official, questions just how hard the Coast Guard has pushed for a full vessel inspection program. “They’re not up there lobbying for inspections constantly,” he said.

Deaths at Sea

In a stretch of the U.S. where seafood is king, tragedies continue.

Up and down the East Coast, fishermen set out to make a living, but then lose their lives. Some were unprepared for the catastrophe confronting them, government records show.

• In March 2009, the 76-foot fishing vessel Lady Mary sank in 210 feet of water 65 miles off the New Jersey coast, killing six crew members. The NTSB said flooding, triggered by a hatch mistakenly left open during rough weather, sank the ship.
• In January 2009, the Patriot sank 14 miles east of Gloucester, drowning its two crew members. “The Coast Guard attributes the vessel’s loss to a rapid event, most likely a capsizing, that did not allow the crew time to respond or access lifesaving gear,” a Coast Guard report found.

“Everyone thinks it’s never going to happen to them, that’s the problem,” said Avila, who served on the New England Fishery Management Council. “A lot of fishermen have never set off flares … A lot of fishermen have been fishing for 40 years and they may not have inflated a life raft. Most people don’t read [the instructions] until you need it.

“And when you need it, you have a minute or two until the boat sinks.”

Avila is among the reform advocates in New Bedford, a city of 95,000 some 60 miles south of Boston founded by whalers. Fishing remains the city’s lifeblood and, occasionally, a cause of mourning.

A string of New Bedford fishing boats sank in frigid, rough waters beginning in 2004.

When the Northern Edge went down that winter, the sole survivor was a crew member who had taken safety training in Portugal. That survivor, Pedro Furtado, later filed a lawsuit and contended the boat operator improperly stored life safety suits in an engine room — where the crew couldn’t reach them in emergency.

In January 2007, New Bedford’s 75-foot Lady of Grace — battered by 40-knot gales, and taking on ice — went missing at sea as it staggered to escape the weighty chill and return safely to harbor.

On January 28, five days after Lady of Grace set out to lure fish and scallops, the Coast Guard found the vessel submerged in 56 feet of water at the bottom of Nantucket Sound. Like so many New England fishing boats, Lady of Grace was workmanlike, not sleek, and aged — built 29 years earlier, its blue facade dotted with black marks.

Divers recovered the bodies of the captain, a fisherman for 25 years, and another crew member, in the business for 27 years. The bodies of the other two men did not surface. Heavy ice literally sank the boat, the Coast Guard concluded, drowning the men before they could reach port. Once more, the Catholic Church held solemn funerals, and the close-knit Portuguese community prayed for families left fatherless.

Avila knew everyone on that boat.

“I lost a lot of my friends that year, and it wasn’t a good feeling,” he said. “I was already into safety a little bit before that happened but that just confirmed it. I just dedicated myself to the safety program.”

A fisherman for more than five decades, Avila said he felt invulnerable to tragedy. After all, he reasoned, he always spent money for safety equipment.

“Even though I had all the best equipment, I didn't know how to use it,” he told the NTSB forum in 2010. “And right then and there, a light bulb went off and I started looking at all my fellow fishermen in my port one by one, who had started fishing with me, and they were in the same boat — different vessels, but same boat. They had the best equipment, but they didn't have the knowledge to use it.”

Avila got a wakeup call when he flew to Alaska for safety training himself. “I thought I knew everything there was to know about it until I sat in his class. And then I scratched my head the first, maybe the second day and I said, 'Boy, I really know nothing about this,'” he told the NTSB.

Now, like his friend Mattera, he leads drills that prepare fishermen for the worst — and get them intimately acquainted with equipment that could save their lives. The best safety equipment is useless, he learned, unless you know how to operate it: How to quickly zip into a life suit. How to inflate a life raft, send a mayday call, plug a gaping leak on a boat taking on water. With help miles away and unforgiving waves pounding, fishermen have scant moments to act.

“The problem with a boat, when something happens or breaks, you are out in the middle of the ocean,” said Mattera, the long-time fisherman from Rhode Island. “It’s not like you are out at the curb and can call AAA.”

Using the life-saving gear can mean the difference between death and survival.

Lincoln, the NIOSH official from Alaska, said getting into an immersion suit increases odds of survival by 7 percent. Getting into a life raft, she said, increases survival chances by 15 percent.

In Alaska, a safety campaign supported by industry helped lower the death totals. There, NIOSH studied the industry’s high fatality rate and focused on the sectors, such as the crab fishery, with the highest numbers. “NIOSH would look at the fishing data for the entire state, and we identified a hazardous fishery and then we worked with the Coast Guard and crab fishermen,” Lincoln explained. “What can we do to prevent these fatalities from happening?”

NIOSH intends to use the same targeted approach in the East Coast, Gulf Coast and West Coast, using its region-by-region breakdown as a guide. “What’s that one or two things we need to focus on to intervene so that fatalities start decreasing?” Lincoln asked.

Lasting reform, she said, requires industry buy in and a focused, not “one-size-fits-all mentality.” Having fishermen help lead safety drills is one piece of the puzzle. “If the training can be led by the fishermen, then they already have credibility by the people they are trying to train,” Lincoln said.

The potential for tragedy is compounded by the economics of an industry that experiences steep price swings — and feels the domino effect of a still-shaky economy. Looking to save money, some captains set out with fewer hands on deck, leading to fatigue during the long days on the water. They stay out in dangerous weather to lure the extra fish that will reel in a bigger bounty. And, they put off housekeeping.

“When you have economic hardship, a lot of times the first thing you neglect is the safety equipment,” Mattera said.

“Stretching it out,” he calls it. “It’s like having a home and knowing you should paint your home every 10 years. And when 10 years comes it costs you $10,000 to paint it and you already have a second mortgage. You either do it yourself, which ends up being half-ass, or you wait.”

Mattera said he and Avila had been complacent before tragedy spurred them to act. “Now we’re like pains in the asses to everybody because we’re so committed to this,” said Mattera, who until recently owned an 84-foot trawler, Travis & Natalie, named after his now-adult children.

After a boat goes down, Avila said, everyone starts pointing fingers. At the boat owner, the government, the regulations. His goal is to shift from the blame game to a culture where fishermen are prepared for chaos at sea. “If you go out fishing and you’re not prepared for any disaster, that’s like you going into a gunfight with a pea shooter.”

In Rhode Island this month, Mattera played the role of man overboard in another drill. Using their might and a yellow lifeline, two men pulled him back aboard. “Like a swordfish,” Mattera said, “235 pounds.”

One of the rescuers, Mike Gallagher, recalled finding a friend dead on a boat in 2002. The man, fishing alone, had not returned at day’s end, and Gallagher searched for him the next morning. Trapped by equipment onboard, the fisherman was dead from head trauma.

“I used to fish alone back then,” said Gallagher. “I never went alone after that.”

Go back to the story.

Graphic by Ajani Winston

Every month for the next two decades, 50,000 Latinos will turn 18 years old. With that many new eligible voters and dramatic population growth expected, Latinos could dominate voting in the Southwest, particularly Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

Every year, 600,000 more Latinos become eligible voters, making them a potentially potent voting force. However,  Latinos have a historically low turnout at the polls: Only around 30 percent of eligible Latinos vote, according to the non-profit Washington, D.C.-based Pew Hispanic Center. Advocacy groups see the national push toward more stringent voter identification laws as a way to suppress an already apathetic Latino vote.

Of the nation’s 21.3 million eligible Latino voters, only 6.6 million voted in the 2010 elections, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. White and black voters had higher turnout — 48.6 percent and 44 percent, respectively.

“We haven’t been able to engage the community to really participate in the democratic process,” said Carlos Duarte of the Phoenix-based non-partisan voter education organization, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund. “To be focusing our energy on trying to generate another obstacle for the people to participate, I think is completely misguided.”

Duarte, Texas director of Mi Familia Vota, which also has branches in Arizona, Colorado and Nevada, said legislators should instead encourage Latinos to vote.

Despite the low turnout of recent elections, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials predicts record voting by Latinos in November — more than 12.2 million voters. That would be a 26 percent increase in turnout from the 2008 election.

Evan Bacalao is senior director of civic engagement for the Los Angeles-based NALEO, the leadership organization representing more than 6,000 elected and appointed Latino officials. He said the group’s projections are typically conservative. NALEO uses the Census and Latino voter turnout in previous elections to forecast turnout for November.

NALEO still is concerned about confusion over new ID legislation, Bacalao said. The organization is focusing on voter education so that Latinos are not discouraged from voting because they are misinformed about what documents they need, he said.

Of the eight states with the largest Latino populations, four — Texas, Florida, Arizona and Colorado — have some form of voter ID law, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The Texas photo ID law is awaiting a U.S. District Court decision.

Florida voters must show a photo ID that includes their signature, a student ID card for example. Arizona voters may show a photo ID or two non-photo forms of identification. Colorado voters must show ID, but that could include a bank statement, utility bill, paycheck or some similar form.

In the other four states with large Latino populations, voters in New York, Illinois and New Jersey are not required to show ID, but legislatures in each state have ID bills pending. California has no ID requirement and none is before the legislature.

With the exception of Rhode Island, voter ID legislation has passed by a party-line vote — Republicans for, Democrats against, said Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.

Supporters say photo ID laws will reduce voter fraud, but Texas Democratic Rep. Trey Martinez Fisher calls the legislation “a solution in search of a problem.”

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott cited 50 voter fraud convictions since 2002 as justification for the strict photo ID law that passed in March 2011. Texas has more than 13 million registered voters. The majority of voter fraud cases in Texas involved mail-in ballots, according to state records reviewed by News21. Only one case resulted in a guilty plea to in-person voter impersonation, the type of alleged fraud a photo ID is supposed to prevent.

Other Southwestern states report little to no voter fraud.

New Mexico, which doesn’t require photo ID, has never convicted a voter of fraud, said Lyn Payne, records custodian for the state attorney general’s office.

Arizona, which has a strict, non-photo ID requirement to vote , has had seven voter fraud convictions since 2000 and none for voter impersonation at the polls, according to state records reviewed by News21.

Colorado, which has a less strict, non-photo voter ID requirement, has had 21 convictions for voter fraud since 2000. Three were for voter impersonation, according to state records reviewed by News21. It is not clear whether the voter impersonation was by mail or in person.

Despite increasing legislative action on photo ID bills nationally, the majority of Southwestern states do not have such laws.

Photo ID laws have been proposed in the Colorado Legislature in each of the last eight years. The New Mexico Legislature has considered photo ID laws in each of the last four years.

Latinos make up 13 percent of eligible Colorado voters. In April, Democratic legislators defeated in committee a bill that would have let Colorado voters decide on a photo ID law by putting a referendum on the November ballot. The Denver Post reported that the bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Shawn Mitchell, has said he may ask citizens to petition to put ID legislation on a future ballot.

New Mexico legislators struck down three photo ID proposals this year alone. The state has the highest concentration of Latino residents in the country and 38 percent of eligible voters are Latino, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

A significant turnout by Latinos in Colorado and New Mexico could have an impact on the electoral vote count in November. President Barack Obama won Colorado in 2008 — after the state voted Republican in eight of the last nine presidential elections. New Mexico has typically leaned Democratic in recent years.

Latino voters accounted for 31.6 percent of the turnout in New Mexico for the 2010 elections. In Colorado, 7.9 percent of the 2010 vote was Latino.

Arizona requires voters to show proof of citizenship when registering by using a state form. A federal court struck down the portion of Arizona law that required citizenship proof when registering with a federal form. The Arizona secretary of state’s office website directs voters to prove citizenship, but does not inform them that they can register by using federal forms.

Arizona Solicitor General David Cole said the state plans to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tammy Patrick, a federal compliance officer at the Maricopa County Recorder’s office, said if a voter tries to register without proof of citizenship, an election officer is not obligated to inform them of the federal form option. However, if a voter asks specifically for that form, the officer is required to provide it.

Civil rights groups cite the handful of fraud convictions as evidence that ID laws are unnecessary and could disenfranchise eligible voters.

“These measures are usually reported to be justified by fraud but in fact voter fraud — it has been demonstrated time and time again — is frankly minuscule in proportion to the number of folks that vote,” said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

MALDEF, a national Latino civil rights organization with headquarters in Los Angeles, has strongly opposed ID laws and has filed legal challenges to voting rights laws in Arizona, Colorado, California, and New Mexico — most recently against the Texas photo ID law, which, in July, was argued before a three-judge U.S. District Court panel in Washington, D.C.

Voter fraud pales in comparison to the number of voters who would be disenfranchised by ID laws, Saenz said. Estimates of the number of voters who lack ID under the new Texas law has ranged from the state’s 167,724 to the U.S. Department of Justice’s 1.5 million.

Despite opponents’ claims that voter fraud is rare, supporters of ID laws maintain that it threatens fair elections.

“It’s something that we hold very dear as a fundamental right in our country and in our state — the sanctity of our elections, that we have full and open, honest access elections to protect that right,” said Chris Elam, communications director and deputy executive director for the Texas Republican Party. “And we as Republicans feel that it needs to be protected and to make sure that we can do so.”

The push for ID laws comes at a time of dramatic growth in the Latino population.

There are about 50.5 million Latino U.S. citizens — native-born and naturalized — and the Census projects that number will more than double to 132.8 million by July 2050.

Latino political muscle first drew attention in the 2008 presidential election when 9.7 million Latinos voted — 2 million more voters than in 2004, according to the Census. And their potential is even greater.

Voting rights activists are focused on Texas, where Latinos accounted for 63.1 percent of all population growth between 2000 and 2009, according to the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based, non-partisan progressive think tank.

One in five registered Texas voters is Latino, according to the 2010 Census. The Center for American Progress estimates that nearly 2.15 million eligible Texas Latinos are not registered to vote. An additional 880,000 Texas legal residents are eligible to naturalize, and therefore vote, according to Department of Homeland Security estimates.

That exceeds the 950,695 votes by which Sen. John McCain beat Barack Obama in Texas in the 2008 presidential elections. Despite population growth and increased participation in 2008, Latinos did not make themselves a force at the polls.

Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a non-partisan Latino voter participation organization based in San Antonio, said the Southwest is not a voting culture. There are fewer independent organizations — unions, for example — to engage and educate the electorate, compared to other parts of the nation, Gonzalez said.

“It’s sad enough that Latinos don’t vote, now you’re gonna cut that group in half,” Austin, Texas, resident Rachael Torres said of the state’s new strict photo ID law. “There’s no reason for that.” If people have legally registered to vote, that should be enough, said Torres who is a registered voter.

Latino voters don’t think their votes count so they don’t see the vote as a right they must exercise, Torres said. She encourages other Latinos to vote, calling the ID law another “scare tactic” to discourage them.

Photo ID laws deter voters for several reasons, Saenz said. Some people do not have documents that prove their identity — they were born before it was common to issue birth certificates or they were born in rural areas where they might never have received the documents. Others might be deterred by the time and resources required to get the documents, Saenz said.

The Texas voter ID bill, SB-14, is one of the strictest photo ID laws. The Justice Department denied approval on the grounds that Texas violated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act because of the disproportionate impact the law would have on minorities and the poor.

Democratic state legislators and civil rights groups such as MALDEF question the intent of the ID law, citing the lack of state studies to determine the potential impact on minorities and the racially motivated rhetoric behind the bill in the state with the nation’s second-largest Latino population.

At the federal court hearings in July, several state lawmakers testified about reasons Republicans gave for the ID law — hotly debated in the Texas Legislature since 2005. Democratic state Rep. Martinez Fischer described the debate as “goal posts that kept moving.” Justification ranged from stopping illegal immigrants from voting to preventing voter fraud and maintaining election integrity, he said of the floor debate.

Despite allegations of discriminatory intent, Republican lawmakers and supporters of the bill maintain that it was designed to strengthen Texans’ confidence in the voting process.

“The purpose of SB-14 was to prevent in-person voter fraud,” Republican state Sen. Tommy Williams said. He was one of several Republican legislators called by Texas to testify.

Williams said he supported the bill because he thinks that voter impersonation occurs more than the numbers indicate. He testified that someone voted under his grandfather’s name until 1994 — 60 years after he died.

Republican state Sen. Jose Aliseda echoed Sen. Williams’ sentiments that the bill was not intended to disenfranchise minorities.

“The public expected us to pass the legislation,” he said. Aliseda testified that his constituents supported an ID law. Whether the law curbs voter fraud, he said, what was most important was that Texans’ wanted the legislation.

Del Valle, Texas, resident Juan Rosa said the ID law is a valuable safeguard. Rosa, who is from El Salvador, became a citizen in 2002 and has voted since then, he said. Latinos will have an impact in politics, he said, but first they need to vote. “We can’t actually raise up our voice if we don’t vote,” Rosa said.

The Texas Democratic Party has called the ID law an attempt to disenfranchise a community that has the potential to change the politics in a state that has been Republican for 30 years. Sixty-five percent of Latino voters said they would back Democrats in the 2010 election, according to the Pew Hispanic Center; 22 percent said they would vote Republican.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a group opposing strict photo ID laws, reported that 6.3 percent of Latino voters in Texas lack the correct form of ID, compared to 4.3 percent of non-Latinos.

Until the photo ID law passed in 2011, Texans could vote by showing a variety of non-photo IDs ranging from their voter registration card to a utility bill showing their name and address.

Under SB-14, voters would be required to show photo ID, which could include a U.S. passport, driver’s license, military ID, citizenship certificate with a photo, an election identification certificate or a license to carry a concealed handgun.

Opponents also cite the burden placed on Texas residents to obtain the documents to acquire a government-issued photo ID.

Under the new law, the Texas Department of Public Safety would offer free photo IDs to registered voters who lack a valid ID. Individuals still would be required to present a birth certificate, citizenship papers, or additional documentation to obtain a state ID — documents many do not have, said Denise Lieberman, a civil rights lawyer with the Advancement Project, a Washington, D.C.-based policy, communications and legal action group committed to racial justice.

Lieberman and other opponents have argued that low-income, Latino residents do not have the money to pay for documents such as a birth certificate, which costs $22 in Texas, and more if it is mailed to voters. Supporters disagree.

Republican state Sen. Williams testified in the federal hearing that owning a birth certificate is a “fact of life” because it is necessary for so many things. So requiring voters to purchase one to obtain an ID isn’t an undue financial burden, he said.

Voter ID legislation also has forced states to consider the efficiency and accessibility of offices that issue photo IDs.

Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis and Democratic state Rep. Rafael Anchia said their Texas constituents — many of whom work hourly wage jobs and rely on public transportation — also would be affected by the cost and time-consuming process of obtaining ID.

Eighty-one of the 254 counties in Texas do not have a Department of Motor Vehicles office, meaning an individual living in West Texas in Fort Hancock would have to travel either 50 miles west to El Paso or 66 miles east to Van Horn, Texas, where the office is only open Thursdays.

Despite his support for the voter ID law, Republican state Rep. Jose Aliseda — whose constituents mostly are rural farmers — acknowledged that it would be a burden on his district to require people to take a day off and drive 60 miles round trip to get an ID. Paying for the documents required to obtain a free election identification card would also be a financial burden, he said.

Anchia opposes SB-14, but he does not oppose a Texas photo ID law in the future. Legislators need to balance access to the franchise with ballot box security he said, and the Texas law does not strike that balance.

Ana Lastra, Lizzie Chen, Khara Persad and Jack Fitzpatrick of News21 contributed to this article.

Lindsey Ruta, Annelise Russell and Ana Lastra were Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Fellows, and Jack Fitzpatrick and Khara Persad were Hearst Foundations Fellows this summer for News21.

Liberal nonprofit Patriot Majority USA is behind two major ad campaigns that kicked off Tuesday. One targets billionaire GOP patrons Charles and David Koch and the other is a coordinated effort with super PAC Majority PAC targeting competitive Senate races in four states.

Patriot Majority USA’s $500,000 ad buy produced spots targeting the Koch brothers called “Greed Agenda” and a shorter version, “Tycoons.”

The minute-long “Greed Agenda” claims the Koch brothers are “buying this year’s election” with $400 million in spending, as Politico  reported in May.

Patriot Majority USA claims the Koch brothers and the groups they fund support conservative candidates who will create “tax cuts for the rich, eliminate the minimum wage” and make “big cuts to our schools but big subsidies for oil companies.”

The Koch brothers are known for funding non-disclosing nonprofit groups like Americans for Prosperity, which support an anti-regulatory, free-market agenda. The Kochs are also major funders of conservative think tanks including the Cato Institute and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

“Greed Agenda” and “Tycoons” are part of a larger campaign that Patriot Majority USA is calling “Stop the Greed Agenda.” The effort will extend into next year and include online and TV ads, direct mail and “citizen participation,” according to a press release from the nonprofit.

The second campaign, coordinated with Majority PAC, costs $1.6 million and features ads that will air in Indiana, Ohio, Montana and North Dakota.

• “Means,” from Patriot Majority USA, criticizes Montana U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg’s votes to privatize Social Security. Rehberg is running against Democratic incumbent Jon Tester for U.S. Senate.
• “Unconstitutional,” from Majority PAC, opposes Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock’s views on Social Security and Medicare. The tea-party backed Mourdock is running for Senate after besting six-term Sen. Dick Lugar in the state’s May primary.
• “Stocked,” from Majority PAC, cites a Dayton Daily News report that says Ohio Republican Senate candidate Josh Mandel hired friends and college buddies when he was Ohio’s treasurer.
• “Sly One,” also from Majority PAC, attacks North Dakota Republican Senate candidate Rep. Rick Berg for his votes on Medicare and Social Security.

In other outside spending news: 

Super PAC Planned Parenthood Action Fund slams Republican Missouri Rep. Todd Akin for his remark that victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant and points out a number of other quotes from the congressman regarding his views on abortion.

WOMEN VOTE! spent nearly $662,000 on advertising opposing former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, who is running for U.S. Senate in the state.

Union PAC SEIU COPE spent more than $223,000 on advertising to oppose presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

The pro-life nonprofit Susan B. Anthony List Inc. made a series of independent expenditures targeting Obama and House and Senate candidates across the country.

U.S. Senate candidate Heather Wilson, a moderate Republican, has been on the receiving end of more than $1.4 million to date in attack ads urging voters in New Mexico not to vote for her.

But it’s not big-business-backed super PACs that are targeting her — it’s a who’s who of the nation’s largest environmental groups. Meanwhile, only $250,000 has been spent urging voters to reject her opponent, Democratic Rep. Martin Heinrich, all of it by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The contest has gained national attention thanks to the retirement of highly popular, five-term Democratic incumbent Sen. Jeff Bingaman, which gives the GOP a chance to pick up a seat that was otherwise out of reach, and bring the party closer to seizing  control of the Senate.

It is also a race where the lines are clearly drawn: Voters have a choice between a pro-union, conservationist in Heinrich and a pro-business, pro-energy candidate in Wilson.

The anti-Wilson spending seems to be helping. Polling group FM3 showed Heinrich with a 3 point lead in mid-May, a dead heat when considering the poll’s 4 point margin of error. The lead stretched to 9 points in the first week of August.

The ads are for “express advocacy,” meaning they urge voters to support or oppose a candidate — not included are “issue ads” that mention a candidate by name, usually in a fairly nasty way, but do not urge a yes or no vote. The Federal Election Commission does not require spending on those ads to be reported until 60 days prior to the general election.

New Mexico, the “Land of Enchantment,” possesses extraordinary beauty and complex politics.

President Barack Obama won the state by 15 points in 2008, yet it has a Republican governor, Susana Martinez. Once considered a potential running mate for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, she has criticized the candidate’s immigration policy.

Former President George W. Bush eked out a victory in the state in the 2004 election, thanks to adequate support among Hispanic voters, who currently make up nearly 47 percent of the population. Obama is favored to win in 2012.

Wilson represented New Mexico’s 1st District — the same seat her opponent now holds — from 1998 to 2009. She then ran for Senate, losing in the primary to Rep. Steve Pearce, who was ultimately defeated by then-Rep. Tom Udall, now New Mexico’s junior U.S. Senator. She sat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, and energy companies were among her major backers.

Employees and political action committees from the oil and gas industry gave her more than $781,000 during her career in Congress, more than any other industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. So far in the 2012 race, oil and gas is again her top industry donor, having contributed more than $217,000 to her campaign.                                                                                                                              

Heinrich’s career top donor is the League of Conservation Voters, whose political action committee and members have given his campaigns more than $145,000, according to CRP. He is also a favorite of labor unions.

The sums expended by outside groups thus far have been considerable — especially with the race still more than two months away.

When including positive ads, the New Mexico race has so far attracted more than $2.7 million in independent expenditures made by outside groups, according to an analysis of FEC data by the Center for Public Integrity. The total includes spending by nonprofits and super PACs freed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allows them to accept unlimited contributions from individuals, unions and corporations.

As for the candidates themselves, Wilson has raised $3.9 million through June, according to FEC records, while Heinrich has raised $3.8 million.

The politically active arms of big-name conservationist groups like the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters and the Natural Resources Defense Council have all run ads attacking Wilson. The League of Conservation Voters has spent more than $350,000 on independent expenditures opposing Wilson this cycle.

The groups have long opposed Wilson’s voting record, which is the reason for the attack ads, said Lonna Atkeson, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico.

“They want to influence the voters, but they also have a history with these candidates,” Atkeson said.

The League regularly releases a scorecard evaluating the pro-environmental voting record for every member of Congress. It gave Wilson a 15 percent favorable rating and Heinrich a 92 in its most recent release.

One anti-Wilson ad, jointly released by the League of Conservation Voters and the Defenders of Wildlife Action Committee, titled “Emma,” features a young schoolgirl drinking from a water fountain while the voiceover accuses Wilson of letting oil companies “off the hook” for using MTBE, a fuel additive that reduces harmful emissions in car exhaust and can contaminate groundwater.

The ad criticizes Wilson’s vote for a provision in energy bills from 2003 to 2005 that would protect oil companies from lawsuits involving MTBE contamination, a measure that was not included in the bill that eventually passed and became law.

Wilson is generally described as a moderate, but “she was going right along with George W. Bush and Karl Rove when she was in Congress,” said League of Conservation Voters spokesman Jeff Gohringer.

Wilson’s campaign dismisses the spending by conservation groups as the work of “environmental extremists” who have poured in “millions of dollars to falsely attack” Heather Wilson because she doesn’t support their “extremist job-killing agenda,” said campaign spokesman Chris Sanchez.

It is hard to say who is paying for the ad.

The Defenders of Wildlife Action Committee is a super PAC funded entirely by the League of Conservation Voters, Inc. and the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, both nonprofits that do not disclose their donors.

Meanwhile, pro-business groups have been running ads attacking Heinrich. Campaign spokeswoman Whitney Potter accused “corporate special interests” of spending millions of dollars in “secret money” to distort Heinrich’s record.

Thus far, the only anti-Heinrich ad reported to the FEC is the $250,000 Chamber of Commerce spot, criticizing him for his votes opposing offshore drilling and extending the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Heinrich has said he supports clean, “home-grown” energy.

But that spending doesn’t include “Stands,” an anti-Heinrich issue ad from a mysterious nonprofit called American Commitment. The ad hasn’t been reported to the FEC, presumably because it falls outside the agency’s regulatory window for disclosure. Other such ads include “Frustrating” from American Future Fund and “Calendar” from Crossroads GPS, both non-disclosing nonprofits.

The Chamber will likely be heard from again before the election.

It plans to spend more than $50 million on the 2012 elections, chamber president and CEO Tom Donahue said in May. The Chamber is the nation’s largest business association, having spent more than $66 million on lobbying in 2011 and a little under $33 million on outside spending on political races during the 2010 election cycle, according to CRP. It has spent at more than $11 million so far this cycle.

“With control of the Senate in doubt there will be lots of interest and likely lots of outside spending there during the fall,” said Bob Biersack, a senior fellow at the Center for Responsive Politics.

Blair Latoff, a spokeswoman for the Chamber, declined to comment on how much the association plans to spend in New Mexico.

Not all the ads in this still-young race have been negative. The super PAC American Crossroads has paid for nearly $430,000 in pro-Wilson ads. Soon after Crossroads hit the airwaves in early June, environmentalist groups began running ads attacking Wilson’s record on the environment.

American Crossroads did not return requests for comment.

The candidates have also been buying airtime. Wilson on July 24 released an ad that attacks Heinrich for voting in favor of a tax on medical devices, calling him “too extreme for New Mexico.”

While it may seem early, Biersack says spending “often has the biggest impact when voters are forming their general impressions of candidates.”

The candidate’s views are subject to interpretation, but based on their advertising, the views of the outside spending groups are not. The election is being portrayed as a showdown between environmentalists and big business. And at least for the moment, the environmentalists appear to have the upper hand.

John Dunbar contributed to this report.

Type of organization: 501 (c)(4)

Supports candidate: Conservative

Location: Washington, D.C.

Founded: 1999

Website: http://www.clubforgrowth.org/

Social media: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook (all accounts jointly operated with Club for Growth Action)

Finances (calendar year 2009):

• Total Revenue: $5.8 million
• Total Expenses: $4.6 million
• Net assets: $2.3 million

990: 2009

Principals:

• Chris Chocola (president): Chocola runs the Club for Growth network. He was CEO at CTB, a manufacturing corporation in Indiana and from 2003 to 2007 he represented Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District in U.S. House of Representatives.
• Chuck Pike (executive vice president): Pike held leadership positions at the Neumann Companies, a nature preservation company in Wisconsin, and Freedom Alliance, a nonprofit in Virginia that focuses on military service and veterans. Pike was chief of staff in Washington to several congressmen, including Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who was once president of Club for Growth
• Stephen Moore (founder): Now on the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Moore began his economics career at the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, both libertarian think tanks. He founded Club for Growth and served as its president until 2004. He also founded the Free Enterprise Fund and was a contributor to the National Review.

Profile:

Founder Stephen Moore started the Club for Growth — now a network of nonprofits and political committees — in 1999 to advance free-market, conservative ideals.

The Club focuses specifically on issues such as reducing the income tax, budget reform, a flat tax, tort reform, school choice and deregulation, according to its website.

Club for Growth Inc., a politically active nonprofit, also has a sister super PAC called Club for Growth Action, a traditional political action committee called Club for Growth PAC, and state spinoffs, including groups in South Carolina, Kentucky, Wisconsin and Missouri. Groups in Arizona, Virginia, Kansas, and California have disbanded, according to a spokesman.

As a “social welfare” nonprofit organization, Club for Growth Inc. is not required to disclose its donors. While it can take and spend unlimited sums of money on independent campaign activities, the group cannot legally make election activities its “primary” purpose, according to IRS rules.

While the nonprofit’s donors are a mystery, several of the top donors to the super PAC, which does disclose its donors, are members of Club for Growth’s board of directors or leadership council.

The board and council members have ties to a free-market, conservative network funded in large part by Charles and David Koch:

• Frayda Levin is also director at Americans for Prosperity, which was founded by David Koch. She and her husband Ken Levy are part of the Kochs’ “million dollar club.” That means they have given $1 million or more to Koch-supported causes and were thanked personally by the Koch brothers at a private retreat last year, Mother Jones reported. The couple is also a major donor to the Cato Institute, which was founded by David Koch.
• Howie Rich, a real estate developer, sits on the board of the Cato Institute.
• John W. Childs, a private equity investor, Jerry Hayden, former president of Peacock Engineering, and Virginia James, a New Jersey-based investor, are all part of the “million dollar club.”
• John Bryan, a retired oil tycoon, was a featured speaker at the 2011 Koch retreat in Palm Springs.

Moore began his career in the Kochs’ backyard, first as budget expert at the Heritage Foundation and a senior economics fellow at the Cato Institute.

Larry Kudlow, the host of CNBC’s The Kudlow Report, is a member of the leadership council and has had Club for Growth President Chris Chocola on his show several times.

Like the super PAC, Club for Growth Inc. has spent in favor of tea party candidates, including Richard Mourdock, who beat out longtime incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Dan Liljienquist, who failed in his challenge of Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch in Utah’s primary.

Advertisements:

• “Debt” criticizes Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican, for failing to do more to lower the national debt.
• “No More” similarly presses viewers to tell Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., on the same subject. Club for Growth Action, the super PAC, ran ads opposing Lugar. Richard Mourdock defeated the longtime moderate senator in Indiana’s primary.
• For more ads, see Club for Growth Action’s YouTube page.

Last updated: August 24, 2012

Type of organization: Super PAC

Supports candidate: Conservative

Founded: Aug. 9, 2010

Website: http://www.clubforgrowth.org/action/

Social media: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook (all accounts jointly operated with Club for Growth Inc.)

Principals:

• Chris Chocola (treasurer, president): Chocola runs the Club for Growth network. He was CEO at CTB, a manufacturing corporation in Indiana, and from 2003 to 2007, he represented Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Profile:

Club for Growth Action is the sister super PAC to free-market nonprofit Club for Growth Inc., founded by economist Stephen Moore in 1999.

The super PAC’s website says “its sole mission is to defeat big-government politicians and replace them with economic conservatives.”

The Club for Growth network’s platform of “economic freedom” includes a flat tax, lower income tax, school choice, deregulation, social security reform, free trade and the repeal of the estate tax, according to its website.

To this end, Club for Growth Action has spent millions on tea party-aligned candidates in GOP primaries across the country. The group showered millions on Texas GOP primary candidate Ted Cruz, who ultimately won the primary runoff against establishment favorite Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Club for Growth Action spent $5 million opposing Dewhurst and an additional $606,000 supporting Cruz.

The group was also active in the Indiana primary, which saw tea party-aligned (and Club for Growth-backed) Richard Mourdock beat out longtime incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., in the first contested GOP primary in the state in decades.

Hoping to replay its victories in Indiana and Texas, Club for Growth Action was the top outside spender in the Wisconsin GOP primary on Aug. 14 at $1.7 million. The group’s favored candidate, former congressman Mark Neumann, did not win.

Some of the super PAC’s top donors are members of Club for Growth’s board of directors:

• John Childs, the founder of JW Childs Associates, a private equity firm, sits on the board and has given the super PAC $1.1 million.
• Jackson T. Stephens Jr., who has given $525,000, is chairman of the board.
• Virginia James, a New Jersey-based investor, contributed $1 million and is on the leadership council.

Advertisements:

• “Moderate” slams Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for not being conservative enough. Club for Growth Action favored Ted Cruz, who won the primary runoff.
• “Only Worse” attacks former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson and Eric Hovde. Thompson won the GOP nomination for Senate. Club for Growth Action favored former congressman Mark Neumann.
• “Choice” attacked Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar, a moderate Republican, for supporting some of President Barack Obama’s policies.  The ad urged voters to choose Richard Mourdock, the tea party favorite who went on to defeat Lugar in the Indiana GOP primary.
• For more ads, see Club for Growth Action’s YouTube page.

Last updated: August 22, 2012