Look Who’s Calling

Jan Baran, a Washington lawyer who specializes in federal election law, said that in practice it is very hard to prove "coordination" between a campaign and a sympathetic nonprofit like Common Sense. He said that it is not legal proof of coordination even if, as in this case, Huckabee's campaign and Common Sense share financial backers who contributed to both around the same time. In order to prove coordination, Baran said, federal investigators normally would have to take testimony and get copies of campaign documents, such as cell phone or e-mail records, that show a pattern of contacts between the campaign and the tax-exempt outside group.

There is certainly evidence that some people who made donations to Huckabee's campaign also wound up writing checks to Common Sense Issues within a short span of time. Dallas financial planner Arch Bonnema told NEWSWEEK that he contributed to both Huckabee's campaign and Common Sense Issues within a matter of weeks last month. He says he made a $1,500 donation to Huckabee's campaign after attending a large fund-raiser for Huckabee at a Dallas club. Bonnema says that two or three weeks later he was invited to a more exclusive event in Dallas sponsored by Common Sense Issues. After attending this much smaller event, Bonnema says he and his wife agreed to give a $5,000 contribution to the pro-Huckabee nonprofit. Their donations, along with a handful of other donations, most from wealthy Texas contributors, were publicly reported by Common Sense Issues in a report filed last week with the Federal Election Commission.

Bonnema declined to identify the person who invited him to the Common Sense Issues event, but he says he did not see this person at the earlier Huckabee fund-raiser. Bonnema says he thinks he was invited to contribute to Common Sense because he has given to other Republican causes and candidates in the past. Before deciding to back Huckabee, Bonnema says he supported Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a religious conservative who dropped out of the race in October.

Bonnema said he has met Huckabee only once, at the Dallas fund-raiser. He says he supports Huckabee because of the former Arkansas governor's strongly conservative stance on social issues. "I like Huckabee a lot because he stands for the moral values I stand for. To me that's more important than the economic issues," Bonnema added.

A colorful Texas character, Bonnema has been involved in the past with various high-profile pursuits related to his Christian faith. When Mel Gibson's controversial film "The Passion of the Christ" was released in 2004, Bonnema bought 42,000 tickets to showings of the film at Dallas-area cinemas, which he then distributed for free in local churches.

(Eighteen months ago Bonnema also helped finance and participated in an expedition by a religious group to find Noah's Ark. Bonnema says that the expedition found what appeared to be traces of an ancient ship 13,126 feet up the slope of Mt. Soleiman, a peak in the Caucasus mountain range in Iran. "I think it is Noah's Ark. But I can't prove it is Noah's Ark," Bonnema said. He said that scientists who had conducted work for the Smithsonian Institution had examined some of the materials discovered by the expedition and told him that they included forensic evidence of four cat species not normally known to have inhabited that location. He said the scientists had informed him that if the materials discovered on the mountain were not from Noah's Ark, then other possibilities were that they were materials from an Ark of sanctuary built by the forebears of other religions or the remains of some kind of ship left there by "space aliens." Bonnema declined to identify the scientists who had told him this, saying he is working on a cable TV documentary that will eventually make all the details public.)