Super PACs spending millions of dollars on the brutal ads shaping the GOP presidential primary have taken advantage in the last few weeks of a pair of loopholes that will let them keep their donors secret until after votes are cast in the first four big contests.
Some of these new groups backing Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman wrote short letters this month to the Federal Election Commission requesting a bureaucratic change that lets them delay revealing their funders, while super PACs supporting Rick Santorum and Rick Perry are benefiting from a longstanding, but little-noticed, ruling that exempts their Iowa caucus ads from disclosure requirements.
Continue ReadingThe loopholes are the latest development in a campaign that has seen an explosion of unlimited spending that?s difficult to trace. And exploitation of these loopholes likely guarantees that voters won?t find out who?s paying for a majority of primary campaign ads until late on the night of Jan. 31. That?s after polls have closed in states expected to go a long way towards determining the GOP presidential nominee ? the Iowa caucuses and primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida.
The disclosure rules may need to be updated to reflect the rise of super PACs as driving forces in presidential politics, two Democratic FEC commissioners suggested in interviews with POLITICO.
?Super PACs are functioning as the alter-egos of the campaigns, and their activity was clearly not anticipated when the statutes were put in place,? Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic FEC appointee said. The commission, she said ?should reconsider the regulations about caucuses and disclosure, or at least take a hard look at them.?
Fellow Democratic FEC commissioner Cynthia Bauerly said in an email that the recent moves by the super PACs supporting Romney and Huntsman ?highlight the fact that more can be done to ensure that voters have the information they are entitled to in making decisions about federal elections.?
But the FEC, which has become mired in partisan gridlock, is unlikely to make any changes in time to affect the 2012 election. The other four commissioners did not respond to interview requests. The commission has already rubber-stamped the disclosure change by the pro-Romney ?Restore Our Future? super PAC, and is expected to do the same with the pro-Gingrich super PAC ?Winning Our Future? and the pro-Huntsman group, ?Our Destiny PAC.?
Rick Tyler, a former Gingrich press secretary who?s now a top adviser to Winning Our Future, said ?It?s ridiculous that we have the ability to raise unlimited money and direct the message of the campaigns when the candidates themselves don?t have this.?
But his group is merely playing by the same rules as other super PACs, he said, explaining ?this is the situation we have, that?s been given to us.?
Winning Our Future, which was established in early December, notified the FEC last week in a one-line memorandum that it ?is changing its filing status ? effective immediately? to one that will allow it to file its first report as late as the end of next month. But Tyler says the group intends to file before the deadline.
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