June 26, 2012 10:15 PM UTC

Colorado GOP Operative At Center of Citizens United Do-Over

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• by: Colorado Pols

One of Colorado’s more shady political organizations had a good day at the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday–as the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News reports:

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision to allow unlimited corporate and union spending in federal elections, upheld Monday, also effectively wiped out similar prohibitions in 24 states.

Most states bowed to the original high court ruling, but Montana’s Supreme Court backed its own century-old law banning such expenditures in a 5-2 vote in December, thumbing its nose at the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Monday, the nation’s highest court hit back, reversing Montana’s law in a 5-4 vote, sending a clear message to the 23 other states that had similar bans in place at the time of the decision…

Montana passed the 1912 Corrupt Practices Act to rule out corporate contributions to candidates, as well as corporate independent spending to expressly support or oppose a candidate or political party.

…The state’s ban came under attack soon after the Citizens United decision was handed down.

In 2010, Western Tradition Partnership – a “free-market” organization “dedicated to fighting environmental extremism” – sued the state. The group, which changed its name to American Tradition Partnership in 2011, argued that Citizens United made the Montana ban on corporate spending unconstitutional.

…American Tradition Partnership has operated under growing scrutiny since its emergence in 2008. The group has changed its name several times since its founding, and has filed with the IRS as both a 501 (c)(4) and as a 527. The group’s IRS filings contain scant information and are signed by its first treasurer Scott Shire[s], a GOP operative who was fined for campaign violations in Colorado in 2008.

Yesterday, in an unusual 5-4 per curiam decision (meaning a decision that claims to speak “for the court,” but was in this case dissented), a slim majority on the Supreme Court found that Citizens United overrules most local limits on corporate contributions in addition to federal campaign law. Scott Shires, the original treasurer for Western Tradition Partnership and a longtime usual suspect on the shadier side of Colorado GOP politics, has been traced to numerous generically-named political groups that turn up in election years in support of GOP candidates. Prior to his election as Secretary of State, then-GOP attorney Scott Gessler’s firm represented a number of Shires-founded political advocacy organizations including WTP. WTP initiated legal challenges against campaign laws after running afoul of them.

And after Monday’s decision, Shires and his front groups can come in from the proverbial cold.