The RNC released the settlement agreement to Politico last week. Here are the violations they settled:

1. Misreported dates of contributions: The Obama Victory Fund transferred $89 million in contributions to OFA, which OFA reported. However, OFA used the date of transfer from OVF in their FEC reports instead of the date the actual contributions were made.
2. Contributions Required to Be Reported on 48-hour notices: Campaigns are required to report contributions made in excess of $1,000 which are received less than 20 days but more than 48 hours before an election. There were 1,266 contributions received by the campaign which totalled $1,895,956 in that time frame which were not reported on a 48-hour notice. Of the 1,266 contributions received, 711 of them were transfers from OVF, presumably with the incorrect date, which exacerbated the problem. The fine for that was $191,135 and was paid in full.
3. Excessive contributions Contributions were received which totalled $1,363,529 and were from individuals who had already contributed the maximum. Of those, the campaign refunded nearly $500,000 upon discovery, and the FEC discovered the remaining contributions on audit, which they will now refund to donors. If the donors cannot be located or don't cash the refund check, the funds will revert to the US Treasury.

As a strict matter of legal compliance, these are serious violations and presumably were corrected by the time the 2012 campaign finance cycle rolled around. I say presumably because I do not see the same inquiries in 2012 that I saw for the 2008 reports. In fairness to OFA, they overwhelmed the FEC electronic filing system because of all of the small donors. Reports had to be broken into smaller pieces because they were too large for the system, the universe of small donors stretched across OVF and OFA, and were difficult to track with existing database technologies in 2008. In 2012, that should not be the case.

One other point worth making: It was the required disclosure process that revealed these issues, and the resolution process that resolved them. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Republican fundraising efforts, since they're done outside of FEC oversight and without any disclosure.

Still, this is certainly a learning exercise in managing campaign finances, and one that should be taken seriously by OFA and all organizations raising money for candidates.

Rep. David Rivera (R-FL) answers allegations of corruption on Univision, March 18, 2012

Well, maybe not everything is out in the open, eh, Rep. Rivera?

Fueled with $43,000 in secret money, Republican Rep. David Rivera helped run a shadow campaign that might have broken federal laws in last week’s Democratic primary against his political nemesis Joe Garcia, according to campaign sources and finance records.

As part of the effort, a political unknown named Justin Lamar Sternad campaigned against Garcia by running a sophisticated mail campaign that Rivera helped orchestrate and fund, campaign vendors said.

Among the revelations: The mailers were often paid in envelopes stuffed with crisp hundred-dollar bills.

CREW, as mentioned in the video above, has named Rivera as one of the most corrupt politicians in Washington. I'd say that funding a sure-to-lose Democratic rival to knock off a far more likely rival (and pretty good progressive in Joe Garcia) would definitely qualify as corrupt. It just shows that when you can't win in the marketplace of ideas, the Republican response is to cheat like hell.

How long before the FEC comes down on Rep. Rivera? Any chance that Boehner would stand for decency and at least censor Rivera? I know I dare not hope for calls to step down.

[h/t Angry Black Lady]

Because Republicans are known for their Orwellian ability to flip around generally accepted concepts into the complete opposite, it should surprise no one to discover that FightBigotry.com would be better known by a different name: EnergizeRepublicanWhiteMen.com. No one with half a brain actually believes that Barack Obama and Eric Holder are radical black power anti-white bigots, but that's what the newest SuperPac would like for you to believe.

ThinkProgress has the script if you're as repelled as I and don't want to actually watch it:

The Obama administration has injected race into the presidential campaign. Obama Attorney General Eric Holder recently said – with no argument from the president – that their white critics are motivated by race. Implying whites are too stupid to have honest disagreements with the president without being racist is in-and-of-itself racist against whites, reinforcing Mr. Obama’s disturbing pattern of tacitly defending black racism.
…

Obama’s attorney general said pursuing the New Black Panthers does a great disservice to whose “who risked all, for my people.” So it’s okay for his people to commit racial crimes? In 2009, President Obama defended his friend Henry Louis Gates after a racist altercation with police, telling a white officer he wouldn’t speak to him but would speak to his mama. Mr. Obama’s response? “The Cambridge police acted stupidly.”
…

Mr. President, you ran as the candidate of change. But one thing has not changed—your tacit defense of racism against white folks, despite receiving nearly half the white vote to win the presidency.

Continue reading »

We have discovered that sometime after January of this year, the FEC deleted a whole set of contributions totaling millions of dollars made during the 2007-2008 election cycle. The most important of these files concern what is now called “dark money” – funds donated to ostensible charities or public interest groups rather parties, candidates or conventional political action committees (PACs). These non-profit groups – which Washington insiders often refer to generically as 501(c)s, after the section of the federal tax code regulating them – use the money to pay for allegedly educational “independent” ads that run outside conventional campaign channels. Such funding has now developed into a gigantic channel for evading disclosure of the donors’ identities and is acutely controversial.

In 2008, however, a substantial number of contributions to such 501(c)s made it into the FEC database. For the agency quietly to remove them almost four years later with no public comment is scandalous. It flouts the agency’s legal mandate to track political money and mocks the whole spirit of what the FEC was set up to do. No less seriously, as legal challenges and public criticism of similar contributions in the 2012 election cycle rise to fever pitch, the FEC’s action wipes out one of the few sources of real evidence about how dark money works. Obviously, the unheralded purge also raises unsettling questions about what else might be going on with the database that scholars and journalists of every persuasion have always relied upon.

On its face, this is cause for outrage. But wait until you see the information they deleted:

Continue reading »

I'm long past the point where I vote for politicians on the basis of their "character," because I know that we don't actually know anything about their characters. All we see is a carefully-designed presentation. And if you think you really know any of them (or their wives), you're deluded. You're projecting, and they'd like to keep it that way.

How you can tell something about a politician is where he places his focus. And John Edwards was the only person in the 2007 primary campaign who was talking about the poor. That's why I supported him.

I always thought the case against Edwards was not only weak, but heavily politicized. (Notice that no one indicted John Ensign. He got his wealthy parents to pay off his mistress and her husband, and the payments were structured to avoid public disclosure. See "IOIYAR.")

Instead, we had an ambitious Republican prosecutor, a holdover from the Bush administration, who made unprecedented charges against Edwards and pretty much destroyed him. That prosecutor resigned to run for Congress. That heavily-publicized gossip spectacle just ended in Edwards being found innocent on one count, and a mistrial on the rest of the charges.

I still like John Edwards. I don't especially care that he had an affair (as Amanda notes in this article, you'd empty out every cocktail party in D.C. if you started indicting people for that), because people make mistakes. And I don't care that he had a couple of $400 haircuts, either. What happened between him and his wife was their business, not mine. But the inspiring words he spoke about lifting up the poorest, about the two Americas? That was our business, and we're worse off for the silencing of his voice.

It’s become customary in politically obsessed circles for observers to preen about how they knew that Edwards was bad news all along. His lawyerly ways! His sentimental stories about growing up working class! His hair! How could his silly supporters not see him for the philandering phony he so clearly was?

Of course, a quick perusal of the John Edwards of 2007 demonstrates that this sort of hindsight owes more to revisionist wishful thinking than a correct assessment of the evidence at the time. Back then, the other potential Democratic nominees, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, were widely and correctly perceived as timid centrists who had a knee-jerk tendency to run from conflict the second conservatives ruffled their feathers. Edwards, on the other hand, spoke convincingly of how change couldn’t come from “negotiation and compromise,” arguing that the idea that corporate interests would voluntarily give away their power is “a fantasy.” Long before the economic crash and Occupy Wall Street forced major Democratic politicians to address the question of growing inequality, Edwards’s famous “two Americas” rhetoric helped force the issue onto the table. Occupy boiled it down to the 1 Percent vs. the 99 Percent, but back in 2007, Edwards was taking cracks at “the very rich vs. everyone else.”

In the rush of headlines about Edwards’s despicable sexual behavior, what’s forgotten is how much his campaign haunted the primary contest between Clinton and Obama long after he dropped out. An early push in the campaign season from Edwards on healthcare reform set the tone for the rest of the election season on this issue. Edwards put out a plan for healthcare reform before the other candidates, forcing the other candidates to release competing plans that were likelier farther to the left than they were comfortable promising. It’s arguable that without the primary season pressure from the Edwards campaign, the initial gambit of the Democrats in the healthcare reform battle — one that included a public option — wouldn’t have been as strong, which would have meant an even weaker bill than the one that eventually was pushed past conservative Democratic opposition.

This isn't the first time Kimberly Vertolli, Sen. Mark Kirk's ex-wife, has gone public with embarrassing information. In this case, it sounds an awful lot like the very charges for which John Edwards is on trial. Do you suppose the Justice Department will revert to that old slogan, "It's Okay If You're A Republican"?

Soon after Mark Kirk's ex-wife announced she would no longer support his 2010 run for the U.S. Senate, he brought her onto his campaign team, then quietly paid her after his victory.

But Kimberly Vertolli, a lawyer who received $40,000 from the campaign, again is at odds with her ex-husband, filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Kirk and his then-girlfriend may have broken campaign finance law.

The girlfriend, Dodie McCracken, who works in public relations, has acknowledged receiving more than $143,000 in fees and expenses for her campaign work. A former live-in girlfriend, she is no longer romantically involved with Kirk, according to a campaign aide.

Kirk's campaign has characterized Vertolli as an aggrieved ex-wife and labeled "groundless" her complaint filed late last year about payments to McCracken.

At the heart of the matter is Vertolli's assertion that the Kirk campaign may have improperly hidden money to McCracken by paying her through another company working for the campaign. Because the money was not paid directly to McCracken, her name does not appear in Kirk's federal disclosures.

Experts consulted by the Tribune said it's unclear how the FEC will view that arrangement, but they wondered why the campaign didn't simply hire McCracken or her firm directly. One Washington lawyer who handles election law said that generally speaking, "intentionally obscuring the actual payee of a campaign expenditure is a violation."

Vertolli also was not identified by name as receiving money, but she said there was nothing improper about that. Kirk's campaign paid the $40,000 to an obscure corporate entity she created shortly after joining the campaign, and it made the payment after the election was over, when reporters and the opposition would be less likely to check.

Federal law allows a candidate to pay a spouse, relative or friend for campaign work. In fact, Kirk routinely discloses that he pays his mother a salary and said he paid his stepmother for an auto during the Senate campaign.

Vertolli said Kirk brought her on the campaign in August 2010 after she gave a magazine interview critical of McCracken's role in his Senate bid. Vertolli's FEC complaint does not mention the money paid to her — money she says she now believes was given to "get me to be quiet about my misgivings about McCracken."

Eric Elk, Kirk's campaign manager, said the campaign did nothing wrong.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse discusses one of the proposed solutions to the problem of anonymous campaign contributions

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia refused to grant a stay on an earlier decision that told the Federal Election Commission that the secret donors behind millions of dollars of electioneering communications must be revealed. The court rejected the request for a stay on a 2-1 vote and ordered that the full appeal go forward in the fall.

At issue is the ability of tax-exempt groups that run political ads within two months of the general election — or within one month of a primary — to keep secret the names of their donors. Such groups spent some $80 million in the 2010 congressional elections, primarily supporting conservative candidates or attacking their opponents. The donors behind less than 10 percent of that amount were ever disclosed.

"It's a very important victory in the battle to end the secret contributions that are currently being funneled into federal elections," said Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21, the liberal group that worked with Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., to sue the FEC.

The ruling applies specifically to so-called electioneering communications. Not addressed were nonprofit groups that make what are called "independent expenditures" in campaigns. Those are covered in a different section of campaign finance law.

Wertheimer says his group is contemplating a second lawsuit seeking to disclose the donors who finance those forms of ads as well.

If this ruling stands up to the appeal, it could go a long way to making elections at least more transparent. It won't deal with the real problem, which is the unlimited spending in campaigns, but at least we'll know who is buying the elections. While we know that people like the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove spent millions to purchase elections in 2010, there is a lot more spending from that cycle that we don't know about. That's no way to run democratic elections.

Assuming this doesn't get overturned by the appeals court, it would be very interesting to see the names of the people who want so badly to remain anonymous:

WASHINGTON -- A court ruling requiring non-disclosing political groups -- including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity -- to disclose their donors is one step closer to going into effect after a district court refused to stay its ruling in the face of an appeal.

On March 30, a district court ruled in Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) that a loophole in FEC rules that allowed certain independent group campaign efforts to keep private the names of donors was invalid and needed to be rewritten or reset to the original language.

On Friday, the court not only refused to stay the ruling, as requested by two intervening groups that are appealing the case, the Center for Individual Freedom and the Hispanic Leadership Fund, but the court also found that its ruling invalidated the FEC loophole, which required it to be immediately closed, resetting to the original language in the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law, known officially as the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA).

District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote, "Prior to the promulgation of the regulation that was struck down, there was a valid regulation in effect implementing the BCRA's disclosure requirement. ... In light of the Court's ruling, that regulation now governs the disclosures required under the BCRA."

That language in the McCain-Feingold law required groups spending money on electioneering communications -- certain campaign ads running 30 days before a primary election and 60 days before a general election-- to disclose all donors giving $1,000 or more.

The appeal in the case is being made by the two intervenors after the FEC declined to appeal on Thursday.

It's about time. I make a point of reviewing FEC filings on a routine basis just to see who is giving what to who. The one thing I've learned over the past year is this: When the FEC is asked for an opinion, it will always rule on the side of the Citizens United folks. I have yet to see them give the time of day to voters' concerns.

CREW feels the same way, evidently. Yesterday they filed suit against the FEC, alleging a practice of summarily dismissing complaints without explanation for the basis of the dismissal. Generally, the dismissals occur because of a deadlock between the three Democrats and the three Republicans on the commission. At least, that's the case unless it's a request for an advance opinion of some new and ugly practice by Republican consultants like Alex Castellanos or Carl Forti's Black Rock Group.)

From the press release:

“The gridlock at the FEC makes the Senate look high-functioning in comparison,” said Ms. Sloan. “The FEC is clearly a broken agency. Instead of ensuring fair elections in which all players follow the rules, too often commissioners refuse to act, and then, refuse to even explain why they failed to act. This leaves Americans in the dark, with no legal remedy. Even worse, candidates can freely break campaign finance laws to gain an edge in a federal election without any fear of repercussions.”

The lawsuit itself (PDF) is quite specific, and addresses a complaint filed by CREW with respect to Rep. Duncan Deport-American-Citizens Hunter's exploratory bid for a run at the Presidency in 2008.

Continue reading »

There's an interesting convergence of politics and law going on right now around the Pandora's box that is campaign finance. Round II of the Citizens United case will likely be SpeechNow vs. the FEC. In this round, the issue is the relationship between the law, 527 tax exempt organizations, and independent expenditures (money spent for direct mail, TV, radio and internet advertising).

The Players

SpeechNow.org is a group formed with the purpose to oppose candidates who, in their view, act to squelch free speech. The named principals are David Keating (Club for Growth Executive Director), Edward Crane (Cato Institute founder), Fred Young (Cato Institute board member), Brad Russo and Scott Burkhardt.

Their stated purpose and goal

The stated purpose of SpeechNow.org is as follows (from appellate court opinion here):

...to promote the First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom to assemble by expressly advocating for federal candidates whom it views as supporting those rights and against those whom it sees as insufficiently committed to those rights.

To illustrate how they proposed to carry out their purpose, SpeechNow.org supplied ad copy from ads they had planned to run in 2008 against Republican Congressman Dan Burton and Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. Examples were carefully chosen to demonstrate their non-partisan bent. Sample copy for one television ad read this way:

[P]oliticians like Dan Burton don’t like free speech. Burton voted for a bill to restrict the speech of many public interest groups. Under this bill you could go to jail for criticizing politicians.

Hey Dan Burton. This is America, not Russia.

But we still have the right to vote. Say no to Burton for Congress. Say no to censorship.

And against Landrieu:

“Our founding fathers made free speech the First Amendment to the Constitution. Mary Landrieu is taking that right away. Don’t let her do it again.”

What's at stake

Non-profit groups organized as 527 organizations have some specific rules to limit the amounts an individual may contribute. Currently the annual maximum contribution from an individual is $5,000. SpeechNow argues that because contributions are being passed through the organization as "independent expenditures" (e.g., funds used to pay for direct mail campaigns, TV, radio and internet advertising) the limits shouldn't apply, just as they do not apply to corporate "persons" in the Citizens United case.

If SpeechNow.org is successful, any group who spends money on direct mail, TV, radio or internet advertising can use a non-profit entity to make unlimited contributions. They further object to the reporting requirements imposed on 527 organizations, and are seeking to have those abolished.

The political stakes

The line SpeechNow.org is walking is extraordinarily fine. They claim to be an issue-focused group (i.e., free speech), but it's clear they intend to target candidates and pour money into those targeted districts to influence the outcome of elections.

It's equally clear (to me, at least) that this particular group will be completely partisan about who they apply their "free speech" standards to, which raises this question for me: What bright-line standard could be applied to ad copy to distinguish one ad as an "issues ad" from another that's a "candidate ad"? The two are inextricably linked. I can't see where any group worth their salt would buy ads to say "Vote Candidate X out of office. That is all."

Ads generally wrap around an issue with the goal of defeating the candidate, while promoting the issue as a second outcome. If SpeechNow.org succeeds, what we will have here is direct advocacy for or against candidates by groups allowed unlimited donations for buying such advertising while eliminating all disclosure as to who the buyers are.

As one who spends a lot of time following campaign money, I see this as a disaster.

This case is also about to become a political football in the pending nomination of Elena Kagan.

SCOTUSblog:

The FEC and the U.S. Solicitor General’s office have not yet decided whether to take to the Supreme Court the FEC’s unanimous loss in the D.C. Circuit Court in the SpeechNow case. While the time to file a challenge before the Justices does not expire until late June, the motion filed Friday in U.S. District Court will put added pressure on government officials to make up their minds on the next step. They must respond to the new motion in 14 days, for example — that is, before the end of this month.

One of the issues surrounding Kagan's confirmation is the question of her recusal in cases where she has acted on behalf of the United States as Solicitor General. Forcing this case to the front seems to be pure politics to me. If she has acted on this case as Solicitor General, she will not be able to hear it as a Supreme Court Justice.

Given the decision of the appellate court and the Supreme Court in the Citizens United matter, it may not matter anyway. It could be that they've won this outright already, in which case we all lose.

Here's what concerns me the most. Even if we have publicly financed elections, this kind of activity will not stop. Voters will be barraged with ad after ad after ad for a candidate, against a candidate, via a known organization or via an astroturf group. While public financing will certainly separate candidates one degree or so from the money, the inarguable influence of these independent expenditures will still hold sway with the candidate and with the public and continue to subvert the process.

Really, the only hope we have for free and fair elections is an educated, engaged electorate with the ability to discern the difference between candidates without 30 second sound bites or propaganda films to promote or defeat them.