Campaign rules and public voices

Campaign season has now officially begun in Nebraska. When that happens, a familiar set of rules come into play. Campaigns, committees and individuals who spend money advocating for or against candidates and ballot questions must comply with the disclosure requirements established under Nebraska law and overseen by the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission (NADC).

Newspapers are not regulators but are obliged to operate within the same framework required of candidates. Political advertisements appearing in the Gazette must clearly identify who paid for them, and unlike our normal retail and institutional advertisers, political ads must be paid for at the time they are placed. Those rules are not intended to discourage speech, but to meet the dual requirements of ensuring the reader knows who is behind the ad and ensuring accurate reporting to the NADC.

The framework is comparatively minimal, and trust me, plenty of shenanigans take place despite those requirements. In every election cycle, we see last-minute negative advertising, funded by political action committees (PACs) and other political groups organized under the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission framework. Those organizations usually trace back to law offices in Lincoln or Omaha, and their backing is not disclosed until campaign finance reports are filed after the election, if at all.

The dirty little secret in the middle of all this is that those last-minute negative ads usually arrive in your mailbox as oversized postcards. Why? It’s certainly not a matter of economy. Direct mail is infinitely more expensive than newspaper advertising, but newspapers (and to some degree local radio) assume an additional obligation over and above that required by NADC. We don’t run negative ads at the very end of the campaign when the opposition, our customers, our friends, our neighbors, have no opportunity to respond.

The U.S. Postal Service has no such obligation, and there is no reasonable expectation that it should.

Which brings us to another issue that arises every election cycle. Last week, I received a letter from a respected friend who endorsed a local candidate. Under a long-standing Gazette policy, I reluctantly declined to publish it.

That policy didn’t appear out of thin air. It reflects a concern that allowing unlimited endorsement letters can create an unfair advantage against candidates and committees that invest in display advertising to communicate their messages. It also places the newspaper editor in a position where putting a thumb on the election scale is nearly unavoidable.

At the same time, newspapers exist to encourage public discussion, not restrict it. Letters from readers are often the most direct expression of community opinion to appear on our pages, and we never wish to undermine that spirit. Never.

So the question remains whether the current policy strikes the right balance between fairness and reader interaction. On one hand, it helps level the playing field. On the other, it conflicts with our mission of serving as the community’s town square.

Make no mistake: discussion of issues is as welcome as always, but our current policy regarding endorsement letters will remain in place for now, though we will continue to reflect on whether it best serves the electoral process and the interests of our readers.