Is Motl on a political witch hunt?

Montana’s commissioner of political practices, Jonathan Motl, has announced that he is resurrecting a complaint filed against GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Hill in 2012.

The circumstances are unusual at best.

Hill was engaged in a heated battle with Democratic candidate Steve Bullock in October 2012 when U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell ruled that Montana’s campaign contribution limits were unconstitutional because they were set too low to allow effective campaigning in the face of unlimited spending by political action committees.

As a result of that ruling, Hill accepted a $500,000 campaign contribution from the Montana Republican Party in order to bolster his flagging war chest. 

Then, a few days later, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the state’s campaign contribution limits until the court had a chance to hear an appeal on the case. 

Finally, this week, the court of appeals reversed Judge Lovell’s ruling and asked him to reconsider the facts of the case in light of the state’s interest in preventing political corruption.

That’s where Motl stepped in, and to our mind overstepped the boundaries of fairness and instead became an advocate for his political point of view rather than a neutral referee.

Motl says the new ruling means that the campaign contribution limits were still in place in 2012, even while Judge Lovell’s ruling was in effect, and therefore Hill can be subject to penalties for accepting the $500,000 donation.

Well sorry, commissioner, but those contribution limits did not exist when candidate Hill accepted the donation, and he had no obligation to wait to see how the case would be resolved on appeal.

It’s this kind of ridiculous self-serving interpretation of facts that gives politics a bad name, and Motl is just proving himself to be one more politician.

To compare this case to a non-campaign related ruling for perspective, do you remember how quickly same-sex weddings were being celebrated in Montana after federal Judge Brian Morris ruled that the state’s ban was unconstitutional? It was the very next day. Yet we doubt very sincerely that a married gay couple would be charged with violating any statute should the Supreme Court later determine that the Montana ban were legal after all.

Holding Rick Hill accountable for a law that has been thrown out by a federal judge is absurd on the face of it. 

What makes it particularly worrisome is that Commissioner Motl has a history of making his own campaign contributions — exclusively to Democrats. Motl even made his own donations specifically to Bullock’s 2008 campaign for attorney general and his 2012 campaign for governor. Check it out for yourself at www.followthemoney.org.

Moreover, Motl was appointed to his position by Gov. Steve Bullock, the very candidate who had opposed Rick Hill in the 2012 election and who had accused Hill of a “criminal violation of Montana law” for accepting the $500,000 contribution. 

Yet now we are to assume Motl is an independent neutral arbiter of right and wrong in this case? 

Unbelievable. 

If you wonder why politics has a bad name, you need look no further than the office of the commissioner of political practices. Should this case proceed any further, we strongly encourage Commissioner Motl to recuse himself due to his blatant conflict of interest.

— This is a commentary from the editorial board of The Daily Inter Lake and ran in that publication May 27, 2015. It was printed in the June 12 edition of The Western News at a reader's request.