How to Silence Talk Radio

The New York Post Online has an article on the two Washington state talk show hosts who were harassed by a judge claiming a violation in the campaign finance laws:

The campaign-finance-reform lobby has always claimed that it wants to regulate money, not speech.

So why are two talk-radio hosts being harassed by Washington state officials under local campaign-finance laws for their on-air support of an anti-tax ballot initiative?

And why did a judge back the government attack, ruling that on-air speech can be considered a campaign contribution — which leaves it subject to myriad rules and regulations?

Because, contrary to the reformers' claims, money is speech, and speech is money. If you set out to regulate one, you will inevitably regulate the other.

Here's the situation: In April, the state Legislature passed a 9.5-cent-a-gallon gas-tax hike — which would give Washington the nation's highest gasoline tax.

That provoked deep public anger. A grass-roots group, No New Gas Tax, quickly formed to overturn that new tax via an initiative — Initiative 912.

Two talk-radio hosts, Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson of Seattle's KVI-AM (a Fox News affiliate), embraced the signature-gathering drive to put I-912 on the ballot.

And that's where the trouble started.

Wilbur and Carlson's radio rhetoric against the gas tax and in favor of the initiative started to drive fundraising and signature gathering. So gas-tax supporters started looking for a way to kneecap the opposition.

They found a handy crowbar in the state's campaign-finance laws.

An attorney for a law firm affiliated with the chief pro-gas tax group, Keep Washington Rolling, convinced the prosecutor for San Juan County (a small archipelago in the state's Northwest corner, which depends on state transit money to run its ferries) to file suit against No New Gas Tax. The charge was that it had failed to disclose the on-air comments of Wilbur and Carlson as "in-kind" contributions to the anti-tax campaign.

The suit was filed in late June, just days before the July 8 deadline for signatures to be turned in to the Secretary of State.

"All they cared about was shutting those guys up," the head of No New Gas Tax, Brett Bader, told me. "They thought those guys would have to spend the last week silent."

Wilbur and Carlson didn't shut up. But a ruling by Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Wickham could silence a lot of people in the future.

Accepting the plaintiffs' arguments at face value, the judge ordered No New Gas Tax to place a dollar amount on the value of the radio station's "contribution."

Bader chose $20,000. ("I basically made it up," he said.)

Judge Wickham squared his ruling with the First Amendment by saying that forcing the disclosure of radio time spent "campaigning" wouldn't restrict such activity, but merely "require it to be disclosed to the general public."

Bob Bauer, a Democratic campaign-finance attorney, says it's not that simple: "The requirement to disclose is still a legal requirement," he told me. "It is typically the first step toward more expansive regulation. It's the Trojan Horse."

In fact, while Washington state law sets no contribution limits on initiative campaigns, it does limit donations to state candidates at $1,350 per contributor.

So, what happens when a talk-radio jock is seen as "campaigning" for a candidate for governor? Or a state legislator? He could quickly find himself making an illegal contribution, far in excess of the limits.

Brian Maloney, over at The Radio Equalizer, has been all over this story, as has Michelle Malkin, here and here. Lovers of free speech need to keep a close watch on this story. Politicos on both sides of the isle would love to bridle talk radio. One can only imagine the rage self important, bloviating politicians must feel when they happen to hear some of the parities Rush plays almost daily on his show.

Take Sen. John McCain, for example, co-author of the McCain-Feingold bill; do you think he has much love for Rush Limbaugh who almost daily lampooned the "straight talk express" when McCain was running for president. To this day, Rush is right on top of every errant move Sen. McCain makes when he sides with the dems, which is often. In fact, Rush routinely calls McCain-Feingold the "incumbent protection act."

It's not just Rush and it's not just Sen. McCain. The airwaves are loaded with conservative talk shows, both national and local, and politicians just don't have a free pass like they did 15 to 20 years ago. It's far tougher for them to fool the masses. Which is why they have their sights set on talk radio and the internet.

Stay alert, boys and girls!