Editorial: Disclose campaign giving promptly
Knowing that a Texas multimillionaire had dumped half a million dollars into a final-weekend ad campaign besmirching DFLer Mike Hatch might not have altered the outcome of last month's gubernatorial election. But Minnesota voters deserved to know about it before they went to the polls on Nov. 7. The secrecy that shrouded Houston homebuilder Bob Perry's gift until last week was made possible by a defect in state campaign laws. The flaw needs correction by the 2007 Legislature.

But Minnesota voters deserved to know about it before they went to the polls on Nov. 7. The secrecy that shrouded Houston homebuilder Bob Perry's gift until last week was made possible by a defect in state campaign laws. The flaw needs correction by the 2007 Legislature.

Perry, who was also a leading financier of the Swift Boat Veterans group that attacked Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004, contributed $500,000 on Oct. 26 to an anti-Hatch ad aired by A Stronger America, based in Alexandria, Va. Had Minnesotans known of the gift soon after it was received, a number of questions would have arisen in timely fashion. Why was the Minnesota governor's race singled out by the Swift Boat crowd? What about Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty made his reelection worth big bucks to Perry -- or about Hatch, that made Perry so intent on torpedoing him? What manner of political connection did the gift reveal, or foretell?

Perry's was by no means the only campaign contribution gift that went undetected in the campaign's final weeks. Minnesota law allowed any contribution made after Oct. 23 to escape public notice. That timing is a relic of pen-and-ink bookkeeping. Now that such transactions are electronic, much faster disclosure of political campaign giving, receiving and spending is possible. Minnesota should require that political gifts be visible to the public within 48 hours.