Is NOM Hiding Its Donors Again?

The National Organization for Marriage is up to its old tricks again, this time in Minnesota, says the Human Rights Campaign.

Groups campaigning for a marriage ban in the state were required to disclose how much they raised in 2011, which got HRC suspicious. NOM won't say who gave it the $250,000 it donated to a group called Minnesota for Marriage. NOM's donation was part of $830,000 the group said it had raised.

HRC is now calling on the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Disclosure Board to investigate.

“NOM has deliberately evaded Minnesota’s public disclosure laws,” said HRC president Joe Solmonese in a statement. "We believe that NOM and others may be secretly telling people to contribute to them instead of directly to the campaign so that they can avoid public disclosure.”

NOM has a long track record of trying to hide its donors from state election boards. In Maine an appeals court ruled Tuesday that it must follow state law and disclose the names of donors to its 2009 effort to ban same-sex marriage there. And NOM has said it will appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Minnesotans United for All Families, which opposes the ban, outraised NOM and its allies. It reported $1.2 million in donations from more than 5,000 people.

Emphasizing its claim to be truly grassroots (as opposed to being funded by a few rich donors), Minnesotans United for All Families posted a map Wednesday of its thousands of donors from across its state.