Jackson Jambalaya

AP reporter Jeff Amy discusses Mississippi's weak campaign finance laws in his weekly column:

"JACKSON — If you want to know who’s spending money to influence voters in Mississippi, you may have a hard time getting a complete picture.

State candidates have to file reports of their donations and spending with the secretary of state. So do political action committees. But reports from political action committees may not make it clear what those groups are supporting or opposing. And a recent study warns that other kinds of communications meant to influence voters aren’t tracked at all in Mississippi.

That study, from the National Institute on Money in State Politics, flunked Mississippi’s system for tracking what outside groups are doing to influence elections (http://bit.ly/13hqkW8 ). It’s another report that gives Mississippi a failing grade. But the Magnolia State has a lot of company, with 25 other states also getting an “F.” Independent expenditures are a rising trend nationally, with more people spending money on their own messages of opposition or support instead of giving money to a candidate or political party.

The institute is a valuable source on how money is spent in Mississippi campaigns. It combs through the reports submitted to Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann and digitizes the data, allowing users to learn things that can only be arduously added up from the copies of the reports posted by the state. For example, users can search for how much a particular person contributed to every state candidate running in a particular election.

This report says that while Mississippi does a good job of tracking groups that expressly advocate for or against a candidate, it doesn’t do anything to track what are called “electioneering communications.” Those are messages that are sent out or aired close to an election and mention a candidate without expressly calling for the candidate’s election or defeat.

The failure to track electioneering communications is a common fault of states that scored low in the survey.

But even traditional PAC spending can be difficult to make sense of in Mississippi. Take, for example, the case of Advance Mississippi PAC....

It’s not even easy to tell what a committee or campaign is buying. Mississippi’s spending forms have a blank to describe the purpose of spending, but it’s optional to fill out....." Rest of column

Notice how this column didn't make it to the regular Republican blogs in Mississippi. Allow me to help them and Mr. Amy out a little bit. Check out these campaign finance reports for Miles Patrick Nelson. Kuyk's special child. So special there is a huge groundswell of support from common people in Desoto County giving him $50 donations that don't have to be reported.

Mr. Nelson raised well over $100,000 in a special election last year without reporting any sources of the donations. Since Republicans usually have a problem raising money from the common man, perhaps Joe Nosef should bring Miles down to Jackson to teach other Republicans how to have the "common" touch when it comes to fund-raising. That is of course, assuming these reports are on the up and up.  No reason they shouldn't be, is there?