This column originally appeared in Kyle Whitmire’s newsletter, Alabamafication. Sign up here to get it in your inbox for free.

Imagine someone knocked on your door with $1 million in a briefcase — money you were free to spend on your personal career advancement.

Wouldn’t you want to know where it came from?

Wouldn’t you want to know if someone expected something for it?

This sort of thing might not happen to regular folks, but it does happen in politics, where dark money appears out of nowhere to tilt the odds. And we voters are supposed to believe the mystery givers want nothing in return.

Just ask Katherine Robertson.

For nearly a decade, Robertson has served as chief counsel for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, and now that he’s term-limited, she’s running for that office — Alabama’s top law enforcement officer.

Robertson recently reported a $1 million campaign donation from an out-of-state dark money group. That’s a lot of money, especially for a down-ballot candidate.

It’s also the sort of thing her party once tried to stop in Alabama.

In 2010, Republicans won control of the Alabama Legislature on a promise to clean up corruption in Montgomery. In the style of Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, they called their version the “Handshake with Alabama.”

Maybe Alabamians should have been watching the other hand.

Among their package of proposals — which they swiftly passed into law — was a ban on a political money laundering scheme called PAC-to-PAC transfers. Until then, political action committees (PACs) could shuffle money back and forth, rendering it all but untraceable.

They say what you pay for is what you get, but in politics, we get what someone else pays for. Who pays for a campaign will often tell you much more than what candidates say about themselves on their campaign websites. The PAC-to-PAC ban was built on a reasonable argument and made for a righteous purpose.

The trouble was, the new law worked in voters’ interests but not so much for the politicians or the special interests who supported them. Politicians, including some of the same people who supported the “Handshake with Alabama” began looking for ways to sneak money from untraceable sources.

In 2018, Robertson’s current boss, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, accepted a $735,000 PAC-to-PAC transfer across state lines. The Alabama Ethics Commission came one vote shy of referring him for prosecution over it, but gave him a pass. However, when the Alabama Democratic Party asked the Commission if it could do the same thing, the Commission said that would be a crime.

Then, in 2022, Gov. Kay Ivey did something to put Marshall’s wiliness to shame. Her campaign accepted $2 million from Get Families Back to Work, a 501(c)4 nonprofit — or as they’re more commonly called, a dark money group.

Under federal law, 501(c)4s don’t have to disclose the sources of their funding. They’re allowed to keep their donors secret so long as financing political campaigns is not their “primary purpose.” The IRS and the Federal Election Commission have long been absurdly squishy on what “primary purpose” is, but most lawyers in the field have interpreted it to mean they can’t spend more than half their money on campaigns. In recent years, however, the IRS and FEC seem to have given up on even nominal enforcement of this mushy standard, to the point that federal campaign finance law might as well not exist.

As Ivey’s campaign showed, a candidate in Alabama can rake in millions this way and suffer no legal repercussions. And as long as voters don’t care either, they can get away with it.

Which leaves us with Robertson.

Robertson accepted the $1 million from a group called First Principles, which appears to be less than one year old. Based in Tennessee, it’s run by a former executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association and that’s about all there is from public records to know about it.

When Alabama Political Reporter columnist Josh Moon asked Robertson’s campaign where the money came from or whether that mattered to her, their answer was, in not-so-few-words, don’t know/don’t care.

“Alabama’s Fair Campaign Practices Act doesn’t prohibit accepting contributions from 501(c)4 organizations,” her campaign told Moon. “Numerous other candidates and elected officials have accepted similar contributions and we are proud to have the support of this organization.”

I had questions, too, and left a message on Robertson’s cellphone, but I haven’t heard back yet.

If we’re to believe her campaign’s explanation, that money could have come from anywhere — Russia, the Klan, George Soros — it doesn’t matter to her. (And if you’re wondering why I’m lumping Soros in with the Kremlin and the KKK, it’s only because that actually happened to Kay Ivey once.)

Either Robertson knows where it came from and she doesn’t want to say, or she doesn’t want to know, which is … better?

Because who needs PAC-to-PAC money laundering when you have mystery money from groups that didn’t even exist on paper until sometime after last Christmas?

Ultimately, though, Robertson might be right. This loophole in our law may make dark money like this legal.

In which case, PACs are for suckers, as are campaign finance rules and public disclosures of any kind.

We’re all left to vote in the dark.

The law isn’t going to stop this sort of thing from happening. No judge. No prosecutor. Certainly not the IRS, the Ethics Commission or the FEC.

No, the only folks who can call an end to it are voters. The only person who can say, “Enough!” is you.

First: Tell me what you think. How should we fix this?

Then: Subscribe to ‘Alabamafication.’ It’s free.

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Kyle Whitmire is the Washington watchdog columnist for AL.com and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. Subscribe to his newsletter, Alabamafication. It’s free.