oops, they did it again
The conservative dark money group Heritage Action for America is facing a possible ethics investigation in Iowa after Mother Jones reported last week that it had boasted to donors of writing “model legislation” restricting voting access in battleground states across the country, including Iowa.
Democrats in the Iowa state House of Representatives filed ethics complaints against Heritage Action and its sister organization, the Heritage Foundation, on Tuesday. Iowa House Minority Leader Todd Prichard filed the complaints against Jessica Anderson, executive director of Heritage Action, and Heritage Foundation senior fellow Hans von Spakovsky for allegedly violating state lobbying rules. A day earlier, a state-affiliated watchdog agency announced it had begun its own investigation.
Anderson said in a leaked video obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with Mother Jones that her group had written “three provisions” of a new Iowa law that cuts early voting, restricts mail ballot drop boxes, and takes away power from local election officials.
“Iowa is the first state that we got to work in, and we did it quickly and we did it quietly,” Anderson told top Heritage Foundation donors in Tucson, Arizona, on April 22. “We worked quietly with the Iowa state legislature. We got the best practices to them. We helped draft the bills. We made sure activists were calling the state legislators, getting support, showing up at their public hearings, giving testimony…Little fanfare. Honestly, nobody even noticed. My team looked at each other and we’re like, ‘It can’t be that easy.’”
But top Iowa Republicans who drafted the bill said they never talked to Heritage about it—and noted that the group did not register as a lobbyist, as required by Iowa law, despite its claims to have worked closely with the state legislature.
“They’re either lying to impress their donors or they’re in a situation where they’re potentially in violation of the House ethics rules,” Republican House Speaker Pat Grassley (grandson of Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley), told the Des Moines Register.