Editorial

Regent does his causes more harm than good

Tuesday, May 3, 2005

How big a price should a candidate pay for violating the law? Is it enough to pay a fine and then go ahead and serve with a tainted record?

In light of calls for his resignation, Regent David Hergert is going to find out.

Hergert will avoid criminal prosecution, but he will pay $33,512.10 in fines after admitting to violating state campaign finance laws in his defeat of Dr. Don Blank of McCook in last fall's election.

Under the law, candidates for state offices have voluntary spending caps. For regent races, the cap is $25,000 for the primary and $50,000 overall. Those who agree to abide by the limits qualify for public funds if their opponent exceeds the cap.

Hergert did not agree to the cap, and spent $65,000 in the primary, thus qualifying Blank for $40,000 in public funds. Hergert, a Mitchell agribusinessman, estimated that he would spend $40,000 in the general election.

Hergert went on to spend nearly $90,000 on the campaign, much of it buying advertising to attack Blank. As part of the settlement, he admitted that he exceeded the cap, but did not notify the state's Accountability and Disclosure Commission by the deadline, thus depriving Blank of another $15,000 in matching funds.

At the time of the election, Blank said he would just as soon not be involved in political races if they were going to turn that ugly. "I've never been bitter," he told the Associated Press recently, "I'm sad ... it's too bad that those things happen in campaigns. They happen in other parts of the country, but you were hoping it would never happen in Nebraska."

While saying he is not bitter, Blank said he believes he would have won the race had Hergert followed the law. It's ironic that Hergert has admitted to breaking the law in a campaign he won largely by staking out what he presented as the high moral ground in the stem cell research controversy at the expense of his opponent.

Meanwhile, Hergert's attorney, State Sen. Kermit Brashear, said he would file a complaint accusing Blank of violating some of the same campaign provisions.

"As far as I know, we were not in violation," Blank told the Omaha World-Herald today.

But by cheating in the election, which Hergert now admits, and by the tone of his negative campaign, he may have won an office, but he has done his allies and their causes more harm than good.

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