Anti-Senn donors to be revealed

SEATTLE — A group that has been airing attack ads against Democratic attorney general candidate Deborah Senn agreed Friday to divulge its donors after the state went to court.

The group, the Voters Education Committee, agreed to register with the state Public Disclosure Committee by the end of the day and disclose its donor list by 5 p.m. Sunday, said Gary Larson, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office.

“This is an agreement we reached that we thought was fair to ensure that the public obtains this information prior to the primary on Tuesday,” Larson said.

The group also said it stopped running the ads Friday, though that was not part of the agreement with the Attorney General’s Office.

“We got our message out there and we just elected to call it done for now,” said Bruce Boram, the group’s director.

However, the agreement does not end all legal action on the case. The Attorney General’s Office will continue to pursue a lawsuit it filed Friday morning in Thurston County Superior Court, alleging violations of public disclosure laws.

Meanwhile, the Voters Education Committee is pursuing a lawsuit against the PDC and the Attorney General’s Office that it filed Friday in King County Superior Court, alleging violations of free-speech rights.

At issue are television ads that have been running since late last month. They harshly criticize Senn’s record as state insurance commissioner, a position she held from 1993 to 2001.

The Voters Education Committee has spent more than $500,000 on the ads and has argued it has no obligation to reveal the source of the money because the ads do not directly campaign for or against Senn – they merely tell viewers about her record.

“This is a voluntary filing to end the controversy, because it distracts from the real issue we’re trying to put out there – which is the issue of Deborah Senn and her record as insurance commissioner,” said Boram. “We still hold that what we did was protected by both the federal and state constitutions.”

Senn’s opponent in Tuesday’s Democratic primary is Mark Sidran, a former Seattle city attorney.

“We think this is great news,” said Senn campaign spokeswoman Karen Besserman. “We’ve been saying all along that these are scurrilous and now illegal ads, and we look forward to seeing who the out-of-state interests are that were getting involved in this Democratic primary.”

Sidran, who has been calling for the group to disclose the ads’ sponsors, agreed.

“It’s about time,” Sidran said. “Political ads should be true, and those who are paying for them should be disclosed. The issue here is not so much the truthfulness of the ads, but the failure to disclose who’s paying for them. I’m glad they’re doing the right thing.”

One of the ads criticizes Senn’s 1997 settlement with Prudential Insurance, which was forced to pay $1 billion in restitution nationally for misleading sales practices.

Senn fined the company $700,000, but suspended $600,000 in exchange for the company’s agreement to spend as much as $600,000 to hire four staffers in the insurance commissioner’s office who would help regulate the industry.

“Who is Deborah Senn looking out for?” the ads ask ominously.