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Kristin Myers 23 hours ago
Sen. Kamala Harris suspended her campaign Tuesday afternoon, telling supporters in an email that her campaign “simply doesn’t have the financial resources we need to continue.” While the former California Attorney General lagged behind rivals like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Harris had raised nearly $37 million by the end of September, with $10.5 million cash on hand, according to her most recent FEC filings.
But what will happen to all that money now that her campaign is over? Can a candidate just keep the money? The answer is: not exactly.
According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), there are several permissible things that a candidate can do with the money they’ve received while fundraising. They can use it for moving expenses, pay campaign staff, purchase gifts of “nominal” value to those who aren’t a member of their family, donate it to charity, move it to a state or local party committee, transfer it to a future campaign, or to a state/local candidate.
In Harris’s case, for example, she may choose to roll over funds to her Senate campaign when she is up for reelection in 2022.
Candidates can also return funds to their donors, but that might be easier said than done.
“Sometimes, they do [give it back],” says Ann Ravel, former chair of the FEC. “I wouldn’t say it’s the usual thing to do. But I have seen it. For me, that seems to be the appropriate way to go, though obviously, it might be a difficult computation problem.”
Ravel also noted that candidates infrequently use the money to give to charity.
“It seems to be more common that they’ll give it to other political party committees to be used in their self interest in some ways,” she says.
What a candidate can’t do, the law makes clear, is use campaign funds for personal use.
But it does happen.
Ravel says she knows of “many cases” during her time at the FEC where candidates would use campaign funds for personal use, often trying to make it appear that they were doing campaign activities.
Campaign finance law expert and Stetson University Law Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy says candidates can be “sorely tempted, and put it in their own pockets, or buy things they think will be fun for themselves and their family.”
She points to Duncan Hunter, the congressman from California who is pleading guilty to campaign finance fraud. In one instance, Hunter allegedly used campaign funds to purchase plane tickets for his family rabbit Eggburt.
California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter speaks after leaving federal court Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019, in San Diego. Hunter said in a TV interview that aired Monday he plans to plead guilty to the misuse of campaign funds at a federal court hearing Tuesday in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Torres-Spelliscy says that the FEC is a “toothless agency,” making it that much harder for campaign finance law to be enforced. With three Democrats and three Republicans, she explained the agency often just “deadlocks,” preventing the commission from even moving forward with an investigation.
“A lot of unscrupulous candidates know this,” she added.
Sometimes, candidates keep the money flowing from their campaigns, long after they’ve stopped running for office. An investigation earlier this year from the Tampa Bay Times discovered some 50 campaigns that were still paying for goods and services, despite a candidate not running.
These “dormant” campaigns, Ravel says, are a “really big issue,” pointing out the case of Hawaii Rep. Mark Takai whose campaign continued to pay people — even though he had died.
A big problem is the inability of the FEC to investigate or enforce the law, Torres-Spelliscy says. Right now the FEC has lost its quorum, meaning there aren’t enough commissioners to vote on investigations. Of the six available seats at the FEC, three are currently vacant.
“It doesn’t help the rule of law to have the primary regulator of money and politics dysfunctional during a presidential election,” she says. “I find that so alarming.”
Kristin Myers is a reporter at Yahoo Finance
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It seems that politics is about owing and paying debts. Who do we the voters owe? Voters are assailed daily by political fights about issues that are fabricated and true. The truth is always readily available but the fabrications more often than not take center stage. The possible reason for this upside-downness is our aversion to pursuing the truth when we hear something that sounds wrong or perhaps the laziness caused by the entertainment value of ridicule. We are in the grip of a political clique that has violated their own oath of office which demands allegiance to the United States ergo the voters. This clique has defiled the offices they hold to the extent that a “Samson” like effort will be required to make it clean. Our Senate is decidedly one-sided and pursuing the agenda of their own and the right-leaning conservatives who under the guise of “American Values” has installed extreme and sometimes unqualified judges in the lower courts who will certainly shift our democracy away from any sort of fair hearings on many issues that will affect us for years to come. Some issues that will surely come about: Abortion rights, right to work and Firearm laws. It is legal to bring these issues to these courts as necessary but the Judges in place can surely slant the outcomes. We (voters) need to be aware of the harm already done by our Congress particularly by the Senate lead by Botch McConnell. Mr. McConnell has quietly installed these judges while not bringing attention to his actions. His own home constituents are recipients of his poor legislation and it apparently does not matter to him. It is our duty (voters) to have proper representation and the way we get it is to vote and know who we are voting for, so far our Congress,( in general) has failed to give us what we deserve. Who do we owe? We owe ourselves the best possible representation and the way to get it is to educate ourselves on currently serving representatives and aspiring candidates, then vote on facts, not rhetoric.
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Politricks- Usual Trump deal, “what’s in it for me?” MA
Conrad Duncan, The Independent 1 hour 27 minutes ago
A construction company owned by a Republican donor has been given a $400m (£308.5m) contract to build sections of Donald Trump’s border wall.
The Department of Defence has announced Fisher Sand and Gravel Co, from North Dakota, will build new barriers in Arizona following reports that Mr Trump repeatedly pushed for the company to be given the contract, despite concerns from engineering officials.
Mr Trump had urged officials from the Army Corps of Engineers to pick the company, according to Washington Post reports, and is a fan of the company’s CEO, Tommy Fisher, who has appeared on Fox News to promote the firm.
However, he was apparently told that Fisher Sand and Gravel’s bid did not meet the standards required for the project.
The company has also been supported by senator Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, who was given $10,000 by the Fisher family for his Senate campaign in 2018.
Mr Cramer said he was “glad to see more progress being made” on the border wall and “grateful” that Fisher Sand and Gravel had been awarded the contract.
“I know they will do very well, performing high quality work at a good bargain, all for the security of the people of the United States,” he said in a statement.
The Republican senator took Mr Fisher as his guest to the 2018 State of the Union address but said he has not pushed Mr Trump to pick the firm, even though he welcomed the idea of a North Dakota company winning the contract.
Mr Cramer said in May that the president “always brings [the company] up” in conversations and Mr Trump likes Mr Fisher because he has seen him advocating for his firm’s plan on TV.
Fisher Sand and Gravel has claimed it can build the wall faster and cheaper than other companies.
It also has a record of more than $1m in fines for environmental and tax violations, according to CNN, and its former co-owner pleaded guilty to tax fraud and was sentenced to 37 months in prison in 2009.
When asked by CNN about these violations and legal problems, the company said the issues were “resolved years ago” and had “nothing to do with the excellent product and work that Fisher is proposing with regard to protecting America’s southern border”.
In April, Mr Trump mentioned Mr Fisher on Fox News after the company offered to build 234 miles of the border wall for $1.4bn – a fraction of the $8bn cost projected for the project.
When Fox News host Sean Hannity asked about the bid, the president replied that his administration was “dealing with him [Mr Fisher]” and said the company was “recommended strongly by a great new senator, Kevin Cramer”.
Fisher Sand and Gravel has worked with a number of Trump allies, including former adviser Steve Bannon, to build border fences on private land using donations.
Mr Trump has pledged to build 450 to 500 miles of new border barriers by the end of 2020 but so far his administration has only built about 85 miles of new fencing, which has mostly replaced smaller old structures that existed before he took office in 2017.
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If you have not been paying attention, look again. MA
Published 23 hours ago on December 2, 2019
By Robert Reich
He’s maybe the most dangerous politician of my lifetime. He’s helped transform the Republican Party into a cult, worshiping at the altar of authoritarianism. He’s damaged our country in ways that may take a generation to undo. The politician I’m talking about, of course, is Mitch McConnell.
Two goals for November 3, 2020: The first and most obvious is to get the worst president in history out of the White House. That’s necessary but not sufficient. We also have to flip the Senate and remove the worst Senate Majority Leader in history.
Like Trump, Mitch McConnell is no garden-variety bad public official. McConnell puts party above America, and Trump above party. Even if Trump is gone, if the Senate remains in Republican hands and McConnell is reelected, America loses because McConnell will still have a chokehold on our democracy.
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This is the man who refused for almost a year to allow the Senate to consider President Obama’s moderate Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland. When Trump became president, this is the man who got rid of the age-old Senate rule requiring 60 Senators to agree on a Supreme Court nomination so he could ram through not one but two Supreme Court justices, including one with a likely history of sexual assault.
This is the man who rushed through the Senate, without a single hearing, a $2 trillion tax cut for big corporations and wealthy Americans – a tax cut that raised the government debt by almost the same amount, generated no new investment, failed to raise wages, but gave the stock market a temporary sugar high because most corporations used the tax savings to buy back their own shares of stock.
McConnell refuses to support what’s needed for comprehensive election security – although both the U.S. intelligence community and Special Prosecutor Mueller say Moscow is continuing to hack into our voting machines and to weaponize disinformation through social media. McConnell has earned the nickname “Moscow Mitch” because he’s doing exactly what Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump want him to do – leave America vulnerable to another Putin-supported victory for Trump.
McConnell is also blocking bipartisan background-check legislation for gun sales, even after the mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, El Paso and Odessa, Texas.
So even if Trump is out of the White House, if McConnell remains Senate Majority Leader he will not allow a Democratic president to govern.
He won’t allow debate or votes on Medicare for All, universal pre-K, a wealth tax, student loan forgiveness, or the Green New Deal. He won’t allow confirmation votes on judges nominated by a Democratic president.
The good news is McConnell is the least popular senator in the country with his own constituents. He’s repeatedly sacrificed Kentucky to Trump’s agenda – for example, agreeing to Trump’s so-called emergency funding for a border wall, which would take $63 million away from projects like a new middle school on the border between Kentucky and Tennessee.
McConnell is even cutting funding for black lung disease suffered by Kentucky coal miners. I know from my years as labor secretary that coal mining is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and the number of cases of incurable black lung disease has been on the rise. But when a group of miners took a 10-hour bus ride to Washington this past summer to ask McConnell to restore the funding, McConnell met with them for one minute and then refused to help them. No wonder Democrats are lining up in Kentucky to run against Moscow Mitch in 2020.
The not-so-good news is that McConnell is up for re-election the same day as Donald Trump, and Trump did well in Kentucky in 2016. This means we have to help organize Kentucky, just as we have to organize other states that may not be swing states in the presidential election but could take back the Senate.
Consider Georgia: Republican Senator Johnny Isakson is retiring, meaning both of Georgia’s Senate seats are now up for grabs. And this one extra seat—in a state that is trending blue—could be the tipping point that allows Democrats to win enough seats to end GOP control of the Senate.
Trump has to go, but so does McConnell.
Here’s what you can do: Wherever you are in the country, you can donate to McConnell’s challengers. If you live in or near Kentucky, you can get out and knock doors or make calls. Or if you have friends or family in the state, encourage them to get involved.
As to the question of who is worse, Trump or McConnell — the answer is that it’s too close to call. The two of them have degraded and corrupted American democracy. We need them both out.
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