A video shows Texas House District candidate Jim Murphy (R) engaging in political speech at a King Street Patriots event to which opponent state Rep. Kristi Thibaut (D) was not invited. In the video, Murphy talks about his candidacy for office, criticizes Thibaut numerous times and appeals to the audience for help with his campaign.

“I think it’s blatant electioneering. What the King Street Patriots are doing as a nonprofit is prohibited under law,” said Craig McDonald, director of nonprofit watchdog Texans for Public Justice. “If they want to do that kind of one-sided politicking, they need to be a political party or a political committee. They can’t hide behind nonprofit laws to do political campaigning.”

KSP is registered with the Texas Secretary of State as a nonprofit corporation, and, according to KSP representatives, is a nonprofit 501(c)4 corporation. A 501(c)4 group does not have to disclose the source of its donations. Violating state campaign finance laws against corporate contributions is a felony that can carry thousands of dollars in fines and years in jail.

An attorney for KSP has said that the KSP events — featuring only Republican candidates — would be perfectly legal as long as the speakers spoke in a non-candidate capacity, according to previous Texas Independent reporting.

“It doesn’t matter how they were marketed if they came and were speaking in a non-candidate capacity,” said Hiram Sasser, director of litigation for the nonprofit Liberty Institute, KSP’s legal counsel.

Before seeing the video of Murphy speaking at KSP headquarters, McDonald was unsure whether the one-sided candidate forums held by KSP would be allowable under state and federal law. Now his mind is made up.

“The acts of King Street Patriots, by virtue of its own video record, seem to be pretty blatantly ignoring the laws,” McDonald said.

The video, posted Oct. 6 to vimeo.com by a user named King Street Patriots, opens with text introducing Murphy as a candidate for U.S. House of Representatives District 133. (There are only 32 congressional districts in Texas — Murphy is a candidate for the Texas House.) The text also identifies Catherine Engelbrecht, president of KSP and its 501(c)3 nonprofit True The Vote, and dates the video Sept. 20, 2010.

In the video, Engelbrecht introduces Murphy: “He is, as we all know now, up against Kristi Thibaut” — someone off-screen shouts “ACORN” — and Engelbrecht smiles and says, “Hmmm, really….”

Engelbrecht continues, “Without further ado, let’s bring up our soon-to-be Rep. Jim Murphy.”

Murphy begins his speech by thanking KSP for its work challenging voter applications sent in by nonprofit Houston Votes, a project of Texans Together Education Fund. Thibaut has a leadership position in the organization, and also received $43,000 in political contributions in 2008 from Texans Together’s affiliated political committee, which, unlike KSP, is registered with the Texas Ethics Commission.

In the video, Murphy calls on Thibaut to resign her position with the group, denounce its activities and to “return that tainted money.”

Murphy tells the audience that he lost his 2008 Texas House reelection bid to Thibaut by a mere 453 votes: “But who’s counting?” he jokes. (Murphy actually lost by 497 votes, according to the Texas Secretary of State.)

Murphy introduces his wife to the crowd, as well as his campaign manager Tom Holloway and assistant campaign manager Rachel Nicholson, identifying them by name.

“I point them out because they want you to get to work, and they want to see you after this presentation, so we’ll get to that,” Murphy says before launching into the subject of the Texas Legislature.

At the end of his roughly 30-minute talk, during a Q&A session with the audience, Murphy appeals for their help in electing more Republicans to the Texas House, in order to replace House Speaker Joe Straus (R-San Antonio) with someone more conservative.

“We need about another eight Republicans across the state,” Murphy says. “And you have friends in Dallas; you have friends in East Texas; you have friends in Central Texas that can influence these elections, that will give us the numbers we did [before the 2008 elections].”

At one point in the video, after making an awkward joke about heterosexuality and marriage, Murphy laughs and says, “Is this being filmed? You can edit that part out.”

He continues, “We’re among friends.”

McDonald said the fact that KSP filmed, edited, produced and distributed the video of Murphy engaging in political speech is proof that the nonprofit is breaking laws against corporations contributing to candidates. Also posted on vimeo.com are three other videos of speeches, including one by U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, a Republican who faces a Libertarian opponent in November.

“The question is, are they spending money to promote candidates or to promote a particular party, and the answer to that is clear — though we don’t know how much money they’re spending,” he said. “Fliers, administrative expenses, production of the videos and posting them have to require the spending of money. Once they do that as a corporation, they are violating the 100-year-old prohibition against corporations playing in politics.”

(Screengrab image: Vimeo/King Street Patriots, Image: kingstreetpatriots.org)