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Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns Use Black Lives Matter Language to Boost Turnout

by SharronMahoney Posted on November 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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With the election one day away, it’s already clear that black voter turnout won’t reach the historic highs it set when Barack Obama was on the ballot. Early voting numbers show that fewer African Americans have cast ballots in key battleground states like North Carolina than in the past two presidential elections. Recent incidents of police violence against African Americans have done little to help, deepening the distrust of the state and disillusionment with political leaders among some supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement. And while Donald Trump has actively alienated black voters with his rhetoric, black activists have also criticized Hillary Clinton for backing the tough-on-crime policies in the 1990s that contributed to mass incarceration.

But several initiatives are trying to get African Americans to the polls by using the very language of this movement—despite its skepticism of politicians—arguing that even if some voters are unenthusiastic about the presidential race, the vote is a necessary part of building black political power and holding elected officials accountable at every level of government.

Taylor Campbell, campaign manager of #WeBuiltThis, a digital get-out-the-vote initiative focused on boosting black millennial turnout, says the campaign has tried to spread the message that voting is “an important part of our toolbox of organizing towards black liberation.” #WeBuiltThis, launched last month, has worked to reach young black voters through social media, visual messaging campaigns, and op-eds written by young black organizers on websites like the Huffington Post and The Root.

“A lot of times when folks want to engage black millennials, the way they engage is around the presidential election,” Campbell says. “We’re not talking about Hillary or Trump. We’re talking about the work that can be done, specifically at the state and local level, to effect change and to improve the material conditions of black life.”

Predicting the voting behavior of black millennials this year has been a challenge. Although Clinton is expected to win the overwhelming majority of the black vote, younger African Americans have been wary of her candidacy. That skepticism has fueled concerns that black turnout will be significantly lower than in 2008 or 2012—perhaps an unfair benchmark, given the enthusiasm Obama engendered. But at the same time, racial justice has moved into the spotlight as Black Lives Matter has created new outlets for black political engagement by sparking a national conversation about the role the government should play in matters of race and policing.

Those are the very issues that #WeBuiltThis and similar campaigns have highlighted, noting that voting is a way to hold politicians accountable on a wide array of issues important to black voters, from criminal justice reform to political negligence in the Flint water crisis. “There may not be excitement about politics and offices, but they understand that they have to be in the streets and the voting booth in numbers,” says Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization that assisted with the development of the #WeBuiltThis campaign.

Black activists have become a particularly powerful force in local politics. Earlier this year, frustration over the delayed indictment of the police officer who shot Laquan McDonald in Chicago led to the activist-driven #ByeAnita campaign, helping to oust Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, black organizers successfully denied re-election to the district attorney who failed to bring charges against the officer responsible for the death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

That’s the type of change Color of Change PAC Director Arisha Hatch wants to see on Election Day. In September, Color of Change PAC, the political arm of a prominent online racial justice group, began organizing Black Battleground Text-a-Thons in cities across the country, culminating in the launch of its #VotingWhileBlack voter mobilization effort last month. “We’re trying to prove that if engaged, black voters will turn out to vote regardless of if Barack Obama is on the ballot, or regardless of whether there is a presidential race,” Hatch says. Volunteers with the initiative have sent more than one million text messages to voters in battleground states. In the final weekend before Election Day, the campaign hopes to reach an additional one million people.

Whereas Color of Change PAC has emphasized the importance of local and state races, the nation’s first black president has focused largely on the presidential contest. During a Thursday speech in Florida, Obama aimed much of his message at young black voters, telling them that by going to the polls they “can bend the arc of history in a better direction.” Older black organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus have framed voting as a necessary responsibility for black youth, often referring to the battle for the vote during the Civil Rights Movement as proof of their obligation.

But that approach might be limited in its effectiveness. “The classic argument that ‘our ancestors fought and died for the right to vote’ isn’t enough and doesn’t wash with millennials,” says Dominique Apollon, research director of RaceForward, a group focused on finding innovative methods of advancing racial justice. He says that older civil rights groups would be wise to acknowledge the disillusionment young black voters feel. After the shootings of many unarmed black men and women, he says, some young people “feel that they are in a state of emergency.” Over the summer, RaceForward conducted focus groups with young black activists in an effort to understand their perspective on voting. They found that while black millennials lacked enthusiasm about the presidential election, they were interested in local races, and it was easier to engage them with local politics.

The activists of the movement surrounding Black Lives Matter have frequently accused politicians of contributing to the recent crises and of being incapable of producing real change. But in the final weeks before the election, several well-known black activists, including DeRay Mckesson and Brittany Packnett of Campaign Zero, issued endorsements of Clinton, arguing that she would be better than Trump in protecting black lives. The get-out-the-vote campaigns have not endorsed a presidential candidate, but they similarly make the case that voting can be a path to achieving the movement’s goals.

“Black voters see the struggle, and we understand what currently is at stake in our lives and our communities,” says Dianis. “We can use the ballot box as the next way to build power.”

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Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns Use Black Lives Matter Language to Boost Turnout

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Pence Isn’t Going to Solve Trump’s Money Problems

by HenrietTKQ Posted on July 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, known for his staid manner and his short-sleeved-shirt-and-tie combinations, might have been chosen as a steady counterweight to Trump’s flamboyant provocative style. But when it comes to adding weight to the Trump campaign’s wobbling fundraising operation, he might have been the worst pick Trump could have made. Newt Gingrich, for instance, has a devoted backer in Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the single biggest source of cash for Mitt Romney’s efforts in 2012 who has yet to commit significantly to Trump’s operation. And New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is known to have been a darling of some of Wall Street’s biggest names.

But Pence? He isn’t exactly a star with the party’s regular fundraisers and donors—the people who have always been the backbone of GOP financial support. It’s true that Pence has ties to both the political empire of the conservative billionaire Koch brothers and some tea party grassroots organizations. But if Trump thought he could tap into those connections to fuel his presidential campaign, he might have been mistaken.

Over the course of his career, Pence’s biggest source of campaign cash has been the Republican Governors Association, which has put more than $2.6 million into supporting his gubernatorial aspirations. The RGA’s main job is to funnel money from wealthy Republicans nationwide into potentially pivotal governor’s races, and much of the organization’s success in doing that hinges on the connections and interests of the RGA’s executive director. In 2012, the director was a party operative named Phil Cox, who went on to become a close Christie ally, running the presidential super-PAC that raised more than $20 million this year. If Cox stays with Trump, it won’t be because of Pence. (Christie’s relationship with Trump, meanwhile, may be going through a rocky stretch.)

Pence did spend 12 years in Congress, but he never really made his mark as a fundraiser there. His largest source of support, according to the campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets.org, were donations fundraised on his behalf by the Club for Growth, the tea-party-aligned group that relies heavily on its expansive grassroots fundraising operation. It’s an organization that has devoted a great deal of time and energy this election to trying to destroy Donald Trump. Almost immediately after kicking off his presidential campaign, Trump picked a fight with the group, accusing it of trying to extort him for $1 million. That’s a rift that all of Pence’s past goodwill with the group probably won’t be able to overcome.

If Trump can’t rely on Pence to hook him up with any fundraising networks, perhaps he can call on some of Pence’s sugar-daddy donors? Notably, Pence has had two billionaires backing his political aspirations, Indiana businessman Dean White and industrialist David Koch, but neither looks promising for Trump.

Koch personally contributed $300,000 to Pence’s war chest, a much more direct investment in a candidate than he usually makes. (David and his brother Charles are known to be major backers of dark-money groups that operate independent of any candidate, and their direct contributions to candidates are generally not so large.) But if part of the Trump campaign’s calculation in picking Pence is that he could rope in the Kochs, it’s probably not going to happen. Both brothers have expressed serious doubts about Trump, and almost immediately after word leaked that Pence was the choice, the Koch organization threw cold water on the idea that the move would endear them to Trump.

White, who is not a household name like Koch, is actually the individual who has done more for Pence’s political career than anyone else, according to campaign finance filings. White has shoveled at least $775,000 into Pence’s two bids for governor of Indiana, including $350,000 already this year. Those numbers, while eye-popping for the average American, are actually not that extraordinary for White, who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years to various Republican candidates in Indiana.

But despite being worth more than $2.3 billion, White is not a major player on the presidential level. The one noteworthy donation he’s made when it comes to presidential politics is a $1 million contribution in 2012 to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads super-PAC, which backed Romney. Rove’s animosity toward Trump and the fact that White also gave directly to Romney (who has spoken out against Trump) suggest that White will not automatically transfer his allegiances, or his deep pockets, to Trump.

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Pence Isn’t Going to Solve Trump’s Money Problems

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Campaign Finance Documents Show Donald Trump’s Campaign Is in Disarray

by TraceeCothran Posted on June 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Maybe Corey Lewandowski got out at the right time. While reporters scrambled on Monday to figure out why Trump let his campaign manager go, the campaign was preparing to release its latest campaign finance filing that looks, at least at first glance, to be devastating. It doesn’t look much better on second glance.

The first glance: Hillary Clinton’s campaign has more than 35 times the cash Trump’s does.

Here’s the second glance: Ted Cruz dropped out of the GOP primary on May 3, meaning that for the month of May, Trump was all but assured the nomination and the campaign should have been in prime fundraising mode. But it wasn’t. Even taking into account Trump’s long-stated claims that he had no interest in raising money from others (something he has reversed himself on)—filings the campaign made with the Federal Election Commission late Monday evening show that Trump simply couldn’t get any fundraising momentum going. He raised a grand total of $5.6 million from May 1 to May 31, $2.2 million of which was in the form of loans from Trump personally.

That’s very bad. It means Trump raised just $3.4 million from people other than himself. His vanquished opponent Cruz, whose campaign had melted away, raised $2.6 million over the same time period.

Trump’s fundraising has always been anemic and the campaign has always relied heavily on loans from the real estate magnate, but barely beating his defeated opponents isn’t a good look. Hillary Clinton’s campaign raised $26.3 million in May. It was only her third best fundraising month. But unlike the other top months, which came at the height of the primary against Bernie Sanders, Clinton wasn’t spending money as fast (or faster) than she could raise it. Clinton managed to bank the bulk of her May fundraising, which is how she now has $42.4 million on hand.

Trump, who spent more than he raised, has $1.2 million in cash on hand. True, Trump has always had very little cash on hand at the end of a reporting period. But this was because he was writing the checks and didn’t need to keep cash on hand. But now that Trump insists he won’t be self-financing, those low numbers are a problem. Even if Trump significantly increased his fundraising since May 31, he would have to be raising money at an almost unprecedented rate to catch up to Clinton.

It’s not just the low numbers that portend potential disaster for the GOP’s man. It’s the way he arrives at the low numbers that looks scary. There’s no real significant support from top donors—the bedrock of a strong monthly fundraising report. But the Trump campaign picked up just 133 donations that hit the maximum allowed amount of $2,700. Clinton had more donations of $2,700 on just May 17 (140) than Trump had all month, and almost 15 times as many for the entire month (1,981).

Elsewhere in Trump World things are looking just as bleak. While some of the super-PACs that have sprung up to back Trump have yet to file (and at least one major one won’t be filing any information at all until next month), the Great America PAC, which fashions itself as the only “real” Trump super-PAC, has just $501,000 in cash on hand. Compare that to the main pro-Clinton super-PAC, Priorities USA, which has nearly $52 million in cash on hand.

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Campaign Finance Documents Show Donald Trump’s Campaign Is in Disarray

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A New Ad Strategy Will Mean Many More Pro-Clinton Videos Online

by TracieHmelnitsk Posted on May 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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With the general election campaign approaching, the top super-PAC backing Hillary Clinton is preparing to release an onslaught of ads attacking Donald Trump and bolstering Clinton. But the group, Priorities USA, is not just repeating its 2012 approach, when its TV ads aimed to tarnish Mitt Romney’s image. This time it is also investing heavily in online ads intended to get out the vote among Clinton’s core groups of supporters in November, particularly Latinos and African Americans.

Partly, the new strategy seeks to keep up with changing patterns of media consumption; TV no longer dominates the way it once did. But the approach also reflects a recognition that in a campaign where Trump has alienated one constituency after another, most Democratic voters won’t need to be persuaded to support Clinton. Instead, the central goal will be nudging reliable supporters to go to the polls, with the hope of boosting turnout among groups that traditionally don’t vote in huge numbers but that overwhelmingly oppose Trump. In a PPP poll from last week, 50 percent of Hispanics said they planned to vote for Clinton, compared with 14 percent for Trump. Among African Americans, Clinton led Trump 84 percent to 5 percent.

Priorities USA has budgeted $130 million in ad spending for the general election. Most of that ad time has already been booked on TV and radio stations and websites, and the total figure is likely to increase, depending on donations. Of that total, $90 million is slotted for traditional TV ad buys, with $35 designated for digital. (In 2012, the super-PAC spent $75 million, almost entirely on TV ads.)

“The way that we communicate with voters is changing rapidly with each election cycle,” says Anne Caprara, the group’s executive director. As voters have gotten more of their information online, “particularly a lot of the core audiences that we want to speak to,” she says, advertising has to move in the same direction.

Priorities’ ads are split into two categories: an initial rollout set to begin on June 8—the day after the California primary, which could effectively seal Clinton’s nomination—and lasting through the convention in July, followed by a ramped-up effort starting in September that will hit its peak shortly before the election. Those ads—both TV and online—will be concentrated in the traditional battleground presidential states: Ohio, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Florida. (With Trump on the ticket, it’s possible that some normally red states such as Arizona or Georgia could come into play and be targeted by Priorities ads as well.)

The TV ads won’t stray much from the traditional formula, but for its digital ads, Priorities is targeting key groups that include Latinos, African American women, and millennials. The super-PAC has been conducting polls, testing ads online, and holding focus groups to figure out exactly what messages and clips resonate with those groups. (Trump offers so much potential fodder for attack ads that the super-PAC will need to determine which of the many negative clips are most effective.) The group points to a host of statistics to explain why TV ads wouldn’t help it target its key groups. One in four millennials don’t watch cable or broadcast TV, for example, and 66 percent of Latinos access media mainly through their mobile devices.

Most of Priorities’ digital purchases are so-called non-skippable pre-roll video ads. Think of the ads you have to sit through before watching the latest Justin Bieber music video on YouTube, the ones that don’t offer you the option of skipping past after just five seconds. “That’s kind of the gold standard in digital advertising, the most valuable piece of it,” says Caprara. She says the group will likely buttress those online video spots with ads on Facebook and website banner ads, but for now, ads preceding web videos are its primary focus.

The group is still figuring out exactly what form those ads will take—likely some combination of positive spots about Clinton’s record and hit pieces on Trump. Caprara says she’s learned not to pull early punches against Trump, noting that his Republican opponents “committed political malpractice” by waiting so long before they started to go negative on Trump. “We don’t take him for granted,” she says. “We don’t think the election’s going to be easy. We think it’s going to be a competitive race. But we’re not scared of him, either. We think that there’s a lot of material out there, obviously.”

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A New Ad Strategy Will Mean Many More Pro-Clinton Videos Online

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Jeb Bush’s Campaign, Once Flush With Cash, Is Now $260,000 in Debt

by marekso65 Posted on April 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Jeb Bush, once considered the prohibitive front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination due to his nine-figure war chest, has now revealed that his defunct campaign is more than a quarter of a million dollars in debt.

Bush ended his campaign almost two months ago amid poor poll numbers, but the extent of its wreckage is only now becoming clear. In a filing made over the weekend, Bush revealed that his presidential campaign is more than $260,000 in debt and has just $31,000 in cash on hand. That’s a stunning admission from the candidate who once sat on a pile of more than $115 million in cash, and a demonstration of just how far Bush fell.

A year ago, before Bush was even a declared candidate, he was working closely to wring dollars out of big donors for the benefit of his super-PAC, Right to Rise, which vacuumed up more than $100 million in its first six months of existence. Bush aides talked of a “shock and awe” campaign that would wow and cow his rivals.

According to Right so Rise’s filing from last summer, on April 15, 2015, exactly a year before the new report of the campaign’s debt, the super-PAC raised $852,000—just on that one day alone. The single biggest donor that day, James C. Flores, the CEO of mining giant Freeport-McMoran’s oil operation, gave $250,000. That would now be nearly enough to wipe out the campaign’s remaining debt. (Not that it could: Super-PAC money isn’t legally available for the direct use of the candidate it backs.)

Last April, Bush was actually worried about being seen as having too much money, and he asked his super-PAC donors not to write such big checks. This April, the Bush team is just trying to keep the lights on while it finishes winding down.

As if that weren’t bad enough for Bush, the biggest outstanding debt comes from a $250,000 loan issued during the campaign’s dying days—by Bush himself.

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Jeb Bush’s Campaign, Once Flush With Cash, Is Now $260,000 in Debt

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Christie’s Broke Campaign Sells Its Old Furniture for an Enormous Profit

by Clarice4515 Posted on April 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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At the end of February, Chris Christie’s failed presidential campaign was nearly broke. After blowing through $8.1 million, it had just $286,000 left to wind down the remnants of Christie’s presidential bid. When most campaigns call it quits, there are still invoices coming in and old bills to pay, but campaigns don’t usually have much in the way of assets to help them cover lingering costs. That’s why it’s not uncommon for campaigns to leave some laid-off staffers or vendors unpaid and out of luck. But Christie’s campaign found a way to spin gold out of what may have been the only hard asset it had left: office furniture.

Although office furniture isn’t usually a great investment, Christie may have picked up some tips on dealmaking when he backed the Donald Trump campaign. Christie’s campaign managed to unload its used office furniture for nearly 2.5 times the price it had originally paid for it. The campaign may have also violated campaign finance rules when it turned this impressive profit.

According to disclosures made with the Federal Election Commission on Friday, the campaign sold its used office furniture to a group called Leadership Matters for America PAC on March 9, for $22,769.85. That group is no disinterested party: It’s the leadership PAC set up by Christie before he launched his presidential campaign—a political committee that is allowed to finance Christie’s political interests generally, but is limited to providing just $5,000 worth of assistance to any actual campaign for public office that Christie might make.

And that’s where the problem may lie.

According to its own filings, the Christie presidential campaign bought just $6,889 worth of office furniture last July when it kicked off, giving the campaign a profit of more than $15,880. (It rented another $401 worth in October.) That’s a yuuugely successful furniture sale, as Christie’s new mentor might say.

The FEC has dealt with this issue before. Campaigns may legally sell old assets (usually office furniture) but can’t sell them for more than they are worth.

“Unless they already made a gift, the leadership PAC could pay the campaign up to $5,000 above the normal value of the furniture—$5,000 being the limit on PAC contributions to a candidate, per election,” says Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (where I used to work). “So unless the campaign has receipts showing that they paid more or evidence that they got a great deal on furniture that’s actually worth more, the leadership PAC has likely exceeded the contribution limit.”

The leadership PAC had already made a $5,000 gift to the campaign in early February, so it could not have bought the furniture for more than it was worth without making an improper gift. Office furniture does not usually appreciate in value, meaning that unless the campaign bought the furniture for a real bargain in the first place, the improper gift could be even bigger than $15,900. Splitwise, a website and app that calculates fair values, estimates that $6,800 of furniture purchased new less than a year ago would now be worth around $5,800 if it’s in nearly new condition. And if most campaign offices are any indication, it probably isn’t.

So how did Christie turn this brilliant deal? His spokesman in the governor’s office referred requests for comment to Bill Palatucci, the lawyer who worked for both the campaign and the leadership PAC. Palatucci said he was trying to track down the treasurer (again for both the campaign and the leadership PAC) but had no immediate answer.

Update: Palatucci said that the sale of equipment to the leadership PAC included items other than just simple office furniture. Although both organizations had the same treasurer, he said he was not sure why the campaign might have had a more narrow definition of what constituted office furniture when it reported its purchases, but he said the campaign had records to show the equipment sold was worth the amount it charged the leadership PAC.

“There was lots of very expensive sound and lighting equipment and other office equipment, that is fully accounted for, and inventoried, so to insinuate that somehow there was a report was anything but accurate would be false,” Palatucci told Mother Jones.

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Christie’s Broke Campaign Sells Its Old Furniture for an Enormous Profit

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Clinton Backers Edit Trump Ad to Make Him the Punch Line

by RichelleSimson1 Posted on March 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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A day after Donald Trump posted an ad on his Instagram account featuring Hillary Clinton barking like a dog, a super-PAC backing Clinton for president has responded in kind.

The ad, from Priorities USA, formed in 2011 and now supporting Clinton, repeats the motifs from the Trump video—Vladimir Putin doing martial arts, an ISIS fighter with a gun—but replaces the barking Clinton footage with a garbled response from Trump to a question about whom Trump consults for policy ideas. Instead of a clip of Trump laughing, there’s a clip of Clinton laughing. The closing text is the same: “We don’t need to be a punchline!”

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Clinton Backers Edit Trump Ad to Make Him the Punch Line

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This PAC Is Raising Money for Donald Trump. But Where Is It Going?

by Lucile93R19 Posted on March 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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A newly formed political action committee is using Donald Trump’s name and trademarked slogan—”Make America Great Again”—in an unusual fundraising ploy. The group, the Great America PAC, has no connection to the Trump campaign, but it has been blasting out emails soliciting donations that it claims will be channeled directly to Team Trump. In a recent email, the PAC implored donors to help “build a grassroots wall of support around Donald Trump by chipping in at least $5 to have your name placed on his official FEC report by signing the ‘I Support Donald Trump’ petition.” On the PAC’s website, donors are asked to donate between $5 and $1,000.

The website notes that the first $5 of each donation will be sent to the Trump campaign. And Dan Backer, the group’s treasurer, tells Mother Jones that this money is indeed “earmarked” for Trump. What happens to the rest of the money, for any donations greater than $5, is not clear. The email does promise to use money the group raises to build a vaguely described grassroots operation that will help support Trump. But there’s no telling how much of the money gathered by this Trumpy PAC will directly fund pro-Trump activities.

The fundraising email is signed by Amy Kremer, a former chairman of the Tea Party Express. Kremer did not respond to a request for comment.

A recipient of the email might be forgiven for assuming it comes from an official Trump-approved outfit. The website prominently features the official Trump slogan: “Make America Great Again.” And there may be a problem with that. Trump trademarked that phrase for the purposes of “political campaign services, namely, promoting public awareness of Donald J. Trump as a candidate for public office; providing online information regarding political issues and the 2016 presidential election;” and for “fundraising in the field of politics.” The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Asked about the PAC’s use of the trademarked phrase, Backer, a Virginia-based attorney who has helped set up a number of conservative-oriented PACs that capitalize on current events, said the phrase is a quote from Ronald Reagan.

The Great America PAC was first registered with the Federal Election Commission on February 1. But it paid to run pro-Trump radio ads in Iowa in January—which is legal. The ads, which cost a total of $25,000, were produced and placed on air by a mysterious ad-buying firm called GRP Buying LLC, using a rented mailbox at a shipping center in Columbus, Ohio. The PAC has also spent $10,000 on television ads and $15,000 on email blasts.

Initially, this PAC tried to associate itself even more closely with Trump by using the name TrumPAC. But a PAC may not use a candidate’s name if it doesn’t have the candidate’s permission. (For example, last year a super-PAC backing Carly Fiorina was forced to create an elaborate acronym to keep its name: CARLY for America.) When the FEC contacted the PAC in February and inquired about its use of the TrumPAC name, Backer, an FEC critic who was the lawyer in a key Supreme Court case two years ago that removed caps on how much money donors can contribute to political campaigns and committees, had a sharp response. In a letter to the FEC, he stated he didn’t know anyone running for office named “TRUMPAC.” He informed the FEC that another party, whom he did not identify, had requested it change its name and that it would do so, but not because the FEC asked.

So how much has the Great America PAC raised with its Trumpish solicitations? It doesn’t have to file any disclosure reports until late March.

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This PAC Is Raising Money for Donald Trump. But Where Is It Going?

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The Nation’s Election Watchdog Just Hit a New Level of Dysfunction

by BarbraRodriquez Posted on March 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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In 2011, former Bain Capital executive Edward Conrad decided to give $1 million to the super-PAC supporting the presidential bid of his pal Mitt Romney. But he didn’t contribute the cash directly. Instead, he put the money in a generically named shell company he had recently created, which then cut a check to the super-PAC, Restore Our Future. Election law prohibits donors from taking steps to hide their identities, and campaign finance activists pressed the Federal Election Commission to investigate. Five years later, the FEC—which since at least 2010 has been existing in a fugue state of partisan paralysis—has finally rendered a decision on whether it will probe the matter, which is something of a post-Citizens United test case. Nah, we’ll pass on this one, the FEC decided on Monday.

In a letter sent to the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog that complained about the donation in 2011, the FEC reported that its six commissioners deadlocked 3-to-3 on whether to open an investigation into the donation. Keep in mind that they didn’t split on whether there had been a violation of law, or if Conrad should be punished—just whether they should open an inquiry. The FEC also informed the Campaign Legal Center that the commission had deadlocked on a similar case from 2011, involving donations made via two other shell corporations to Romney’s super-PAC.

The FEC has been mired in a messy standoff for years now. With three Republican commissioners and three Democratic commissioners, it deadlocks on nearly every question put to it, even the minor ones. But this case was essentially a big softball. Conrad eventually publicly acknowledged he was behind the shell corporation. Donations from anonymous corporations to super-PACs are becoming increasingly common, but it is rare that the original source of the money reveals himself.

The FEC’s inability to open an investigation ends this case, but it doesn’t create a legal precedent. The commission could theoretically pursue future cases over the use of limited liability companies to fund campaigns. But don’t hold your breath, says Paul S. Ryan, the deputy executive director for the Campaign Legal Center.

“We have seen a pretty dramatic increase in the use of the LLCs to contribute to super-PACs, and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon,” he says, noting that the Campaign Legal Center has filed three similar complaints in the last two weeks alone. “But I think the dismissal of these complaints from 2011 will be viewed as a greenlight to continue laundering money into super-PACs.”

For the gridlocked commission, Ryan fears that this is far from rock bottom. “I’ve thought on several occasions that we’ve reached bottom, and they continue to surprise me with greater and greater dysfunction every year. This is a new low, that’s for sure. This does seem to be a million-dollar violation with an admission, and the FEC won’t even do anything about that. If they won’t do this, what hope is there for them to do any investigations in the context of less clear-cut violations?”

Ryan says the Campaign Legal Center will decide in the coming weeks whether to sue the FEC over its failure to act in this case.

Charlie Spies, an attorney for Restore Our Future, the Romney super-PAC that took the donation, told Mother Jones that the organization had followed the law.

More here – 

The Nation’s Election Watchdog Just Hit a New Level of Dysfunction

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Why Are George Soros-Linked Financiers Giving Big Bucks to Support John Kasich?

by RoslynEllington Posted on February 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Two Wall Street titans who helped financier George Soros make his billions have channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars into John Kasich’s presidential bid. According to Federal Election Commission records, Scott Bessent, who was Soros’ chief investment officer until December, last fall donated $200,000 to New Day for America, the pro-Kasich super-PAC. In August, Stanley Druckenmiller, who was Soros’ lead fund manager from 1988 to 2000, donated $150,000 to the same super-PAC.

Given that Kasich, after retiring as a congressman in 2000, worked for seven years at Lehman Brothers, until its collapse in 2008, it’s not surprising that the Ohio governor is an attractive investment for big finance guys. But Soros is a bogeyman for conservatives, fiercely reviled by the right over the years for his deep-pocketed support of Democrats and progressive organizations. He recently emerged from something of a political slumber, donating $8 million in 2015 to two pro-Hillary Clinton super-PACs, after several years of keeping a relatively low profile as a political donor.

Druckenmiller no longer has a connection with Soros. Bessent, though, is still involved with managing Soros’ wealth. In early January, he announced he was creating a $4.5 billion hedge fund, Key Square Group, with $2 billion from Soros.

Bessent is perhaps best known for his role in a 2013 move by Soros to bet against the yen, which netted Soros’ fund about $1 billion when the Japanese currency fell. Bessent, who did not respond to a request for comment, also donated $2,700, the maximum allowed, directly to Kasich’s campaign. He has a history of contributing to candidates and PACs on both sides of the aisle. Last March, he donated to $5,400 to Democratic Rep. Sean Maloney (D-N.Y.), $1,500 to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and $5,000 to Right to Rise, the pro-Jeb Bush super-PAC. In 2013, he gave $25,000 to Ready for Hillary, a pro-Clinton super-PAC. But, by far, his largest political donation has been to Kasich.

Druckenmiller has focused his political giving largely on Republicans, but he has donated to a few Democrats. Last year, prior to donating that $150,000 to the pro-Kasich super-PAC, he wrote Right To Rise a check for $103,000. He also gave $100,000 to a super-PAC backing Chris Christie, who dropped out of the presidential race this week.

Druckenmiller and Soros “broke” the Bank of England in 1992, shorting the British pound and making more than $1 billion in a single day when the currency plummeted. That windfall made Soros famous and one of the world’s richest men. Eight years later, Druckenmiller left Soros to manage his own hedge fund. He retired in 2010. He has publicly campaigned for cuts to Social Security payments, arguing that baby boomers’ retirement costs will prove disastrous for future generations.

There’s no word yet on how the donations to the Kasich presidential effort from these Soros-linked financiers will effect Glenn Beck’s theory that Soros is the puppet master behind…well, everything.

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Why Are George Soros-Linked Financiers Giving Big Bucks to Support John Kasich?

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