Secretary of State Jena Griswold is leading the charge on a new effort to keep foreign influence out of Colorado’s elections, and she’s enlisted a pair of Democratic lawmakers to help. The effort comes in the form of a bill from Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, and Rep. Steven Woodrow, D-Denver, that would ban foreign-influenced corporation from spending in the state’s elections. 

“This bill continues our work to fortify democracy by limiting foreign corporate influence in dark money in Colorado’s elections,” Griswold said in a recent news conference unveiling the proposal. “Just as non-U.S. citizens cannot contribute directly to candidates’ campaigns, corporations with significant foreign ownership should not be allowed to influence candidate elections here in Colorado.” 

Griswold said under the bill, any corporation boasting a 1% ownership from a foreign government, a 5% ownership from a single non-American citizen or a 20% ownership from a group of foreign nationals wouldn’t be able to use its corporate coffers to influence candidate campaigns through super PAC spending. 

According to Bridges, the proposal gets directly at a core Colorado value: independence.  

“We don’t want to be influenced by folks that we don’t think deserve to have a say in our elections,” he said at the news conference. “This bill closes one more of those loopholes that allows those foreign-influenced corporations to have an outsized impact on who it is that is serving the people of this state.” 

Meanwhile, Woodrow told Colorado Politics in an interview he would like to see further steps taken to rid state government of the “corrupting influence of money.” But Woodrow said he’s limited by Citizens United. That’s the landmark 2010 Supreme Court decision holding the First Amendment prevents the government from restricting independent expenditures by corporations on political communications. 

“Now I disagree with that as an attorney,” he said. “But barring a constitutional amendment, it’s going to be here with us.” 

One area where inroads could be made, Woodrow said, was on foreign money influencing elections. But does he currently see that as a problem? 

“Potentially. There’s certainly a problem with money influencing Colorado,” Woodrow said. “And when you couple that with what’s happened in recent times, whether it’s Russia or other foreign interests trying to wield influence in our elections, it’s unacceptable and has had disastrous results.“ 

Federal Elections Commissioner Ellen Weintraub was able to highlight a more specific instance. Speaking at the news conference, she said the biggest penalty her agency collected this decade came from a case involving a domestic subsidiary of a foreign corporation that was spending illegally in an American election. 

“This is a real problem and it needs to be addressed,” she said. 

While the bill has been introduced to address the problem, Woodrow said the work on the proposal is far from over. 

“I’m going to be getting with Sen. Bridges and some folks from the secretary of state’s office to sit down and map out who we should be meeting with,” he said. “We want everyone to be able to have their say and put their thoughts in.”