“MJ Hegar, candidate for U.S. Senate and mother of two young kids, has asked the Federal Election Commission for approval to spend campaign donations on child care as she seeks to oust Sen. John Cornyn,” the Dallas Morning News reports.
“Cornyn weighed in Friday with the commission — offering his ‘full support.'”
“Although Elton Gallegly (R) hasn’t been a congressman for years, he has more than $120,000 in campaign funds left, and federal regulators want to know if some of the money has been spent for personal use,” the Ventura County Star reports.
“At issue is money paid to his wife for managing the leftover funds and money spent on printing.”
“The U.S. Supreme Court declined an opportunity to give businesses broader rights to contribute money to political candidates and causes,” Bloomberg reports.
“The justices, without comment Monday, refused to question a Massachusetts law that bars for-profit corporations from making campaign donations.”
“A political organization run by David Bossie, President Trump’s former deputy campaign manager, has raised millions of dollars by saying it’s supporting Trump-aligned conservative candidates — but has spent only a tiny fraction of that money supporting candidates,” Axios reports.
“Instead, federal records suggest the Presidential Coalition has spent nearly all its money — raised mostly from small-dollar donations — on more fundraising, as well as administrative costs, which include Bossie’s salary, according to a new report produced by the Campaign Legal Center.”
More from Axios: “About two-thirds of the contributions… came from donors giving less than $200 in a single year. And of the donors identified in its tax forms, most said they were retired.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) unveiled a plan on Wednesday to give every voter up to $600 in what she calls “Democracy Dollars” that they can donate to federal candidates for office, NBC News reports.
“Under Gillibrand’s plan, every eligible voter could register for vouchers to donate up to $100 in a primary election and $100 in a general election each cycle, either all at once or in $10 increments to one or more candidates over time. Each participant would get a separate $200 pool for House, Senate and presidential contests for a total maximum donation of $600 for those federal offices.”
ProPublica: “Since 2015, thousands of complaints have streamed in — from citizens, public interest groups, IRS agents, government officials and more — that C4s are abusing the rules. But the agency has not stripped a single organization of its tax-exempt status for breaking spending rules during that period. (A handful of groups have had their status revoked for failing to file financial statements for three consecutive years.) Most cases do not even reach the IRS committee created to examine them.”
Charlie Cook: “While there will always be a place in politics for big donors, in this campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination large donors may well play less of a role than any time in modern history. The truth is, they weren’t that important in influencing the Republican nomination in 2016, either.”
“Technological growth has brought new ways for information to flow, and yet reaching voters is harder than in the old days, when TV ads alone could work. These changes mean that major donors are not sufficient, and in some cases not even necessary, to mount a competitive campaign. It’s about scale.”
First Read: “The Dems’ bundler model (whereby candidates race to get maxed-out checks from donors) has been replaced by the ActBlue model (where they hunt for small-dollar donors over the internet).”
“This transformation — at least for the first quarter — has resulted in less overall money.”
“In the first quarter of 2007, the Top 6 Dem candidates (Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Biden, Richardson, Dodd) raised a combined $85 million, led by Obama and Clinton at about $25 million each. Yet in the first quarter of 2019, the Top 7 Dem candidates so far (Sanders, Harris, O’Rourke, Buttigieg, Warren, Klobuchar, Booker) have raised a combined $63 million.”
“But the transformation also has resulted in many more small donors, who can donate again. And again. And again.”
“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is pulling out all the stops to make sure not a single Republican senator backs the campaign finance and ethics reform bill that House Democrats are set to pass on Friday,” The Hill reports.
“McConnell, a longtime opponent of campaign finance reform who battled the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) over the issue, made clear in December that the House proposal would never see floor time in the Senate.”
“He’s continued to pummel the legislation, sending a stern warning to any GOP colleague who may be thinking about supporting it.”
“A super PAC closely linked to Paul Manafort is facing questions about why it failed to report a $1 million contribution received just before the 2016 presidential election,” TPM reports.
“In a Tuesday letter, the Federal Election Commission asked the Rebuilding America Now PAC for more information about the contribution, which the PAC first disclosed in an amended report in November 2018—some two years after the fact. The FEC letter raises new questions about the murky financial operations of the PAC, which was operated by two Manafort deputies.”
“Special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly investigating whether Rebuilding America Now illegally received foreign funds and was connected to a scheme that Manafort allegedly lied about while purportedly cooperating with Mueller.”
Mother Jones: “From the time the tax bill was first introduced on Nov. 2, 2017, until the end of the year, a 60-day period, dozens of billionaires and millionaires dramatically boosted their political contributions unlike they had in past years, giving a total of $31.1 million in that two months, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics found.”
“The Center’s analysis found that 144 wealthy donors, some household names and some behind-the-scenes, contributed at least $50,000 to Republicans and conservative groups in that time frame. For 87 of those, three out of five, the surge of giving at year’s end reflected a marked change in their giving behavior.”
“Most telling, say campaign finance experts, is that 25 wealthy donors gave all their 2017 money in the final two months of the year, the first time they did so during the previous four off-election years—2009, 2011, 2013, 2015.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) “exposed some of the biggest flaws and loopholes in campaign finance laws this week,” the HuffPost reports.
“During a hearing, the freshman lawmaker created a game in which she pretended to be ‘a really, really bad guy’ who wants to abuse the system as much as possible. Then, in a series of questions, she exposed the world of payoffs, dark money, PACs and more. She even revealed how it was perfectly legal for a lawmaker to invest in an industry, then write laws to benefit that industry and increase the value of the investment.”
Watch the video.
Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ), “whose fundraising practices have drawn scrutiny in the past, appears to have accepted more than $270,000 in excessive campaign contributions during the recent midterm campaign,” the AP reports.
“As Democratic presidential hopefuls promise not to boost their candidacies through spending by outside groups with cash from wealthy donors, sometimes given secretly, a new report says the party received most of the so-called ‘dark money’ spent on political ads in the 2018 midterms,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Walter Shapiro: “Democrats, unlike Republicans, have never firebombed each other with unlimited Super PAC money in presidential primaries. That Democratic record of restraint owes as much to a quirk of timing as it does to party-wide opposition to whatever-it-takes fundraising.”
“Barack Obama ran unopposed for the nomination in 2012, the first election cycle after the Citizens United decision. And in 2016, Hillary Clinton, a frontrunner with a shaky commitment to campaign reform, decided for strategic reasons not to attack the small-donor-powered Bernie Sanders.”
“But as more than a dozen serious Democratic candidates game out their potential 2020 presidential races over the holidays, thoughts turn to sugar plums and, sadly, to Super PACs. A recent front-page New York Times story, augmented by my own reporting, suggests that 2020 is likely to be the year when ambition leads some Democratic candidates to try to follow the Super PAC route to the nomination.”
“Sworn statements by President Trump dating back several decades indicate he has a deep understanding of campaign-finance laws, legal experts say, which could be critical if investigators ever pursue a case against him over his alleged direction of hush-money payments in the 2016 campaign,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Mr. Trump’s statements were made as part of a 2000 regulatory investigation into his casino company and in 1988 testimony for a government-integrity commission.”
President Trump doubled down on the claim that he’s not responsible for campaign finance violations by Michael Cohen on Fox News, saying that investigators should be looking at Congress’ “slush fund” for campaign violations instead.
Said Trump: “Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to something that’s not even a crime. Nobody except for me would be looked at like this. Nobody. What about Congress? The slush fund. Millions and millions of dollars paid out each year. They have a slush fund. Millions. They don’t talk about campaign finance anything.”
President Trump asserted Monday that payments to buy the silence of two women about alleged affairs were not illegal campaign contributions, as federal prosecutors contend, but instead a “simple private transaction,” the Washington Post reports.
“In his tweets, Trump suggested that the payments were being scrutinized only because prosecutors have not been able to find evidence of collusion between his 2016 campaign and Russia. He also appeared to suggest that prosecutors are taking their cues from Democrats… He further asserted that even if the payments could be considered campaign contributions, he should be facing a civil case rather than a criminal case. And he said, Cohen should be held responsible, not him.”
“Trump’s tweets were criticized Monday by several lawyers, both for their substance and for his public airing of a defense that could complicate matters if charges are ever brought against him.”
For members: The John Edwards Defense Won’t Work for Trump
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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