Report shows the swanky world of PACs
WASHINGTON — Tickets worth $7,236 to the Santa Fe Opera for a Democratic senator from New Mexico and his supporters. Nearly $19,000 in tickets to the two-day horse race at the Breeders’ Cup for a Kentucky GOP congressman and his racetrack guests.
In both cases and many more like these, the money came from a loosely regulated pot of money that lawmakers use to advance their standing in Congress and support other members’ re-election campaigns.
A report released by two advocacy groups seeking greater regulation of campaign finance offers insight into the swanky world of fundraising for political action committees known as leadership PACs — at five-star resorts, high-dollar events and exclusive golf clubs.
Leadership PACs were established in 1978 by then-Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to help like-minded Democratic lawmakers advance to higherranking positions in Congress. The idea was to let members raise money for their allies on the Hill through fundraising vehicles separate from their campaign committees.
The money is often used for what’s called donor cultivation: feting wealthy supporters in the hopes that they will write big checks back to the leadership PAC and other committees.
Over the years, leadership PACs have become must-have accessories on Capitol Hill. Currently, 486 of 535 members of Congress have at least one leadership PAC, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Even in the era of big-money super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money per election cycle, leadership PACs remain essential on Capitol Hill. They are so ubiquitous that even first-time federal candidates establish their own during their campaigns — long before ballots are cast.
They help members signal to their colleagues and donors that they are ambitious and serious players, said Marian Currinder, a senior fellow with the free-market think tank R Street Institute’s Governance Project, who has studied the growth of leadership PACs.
“It seems that the usefulness of them is more of an intra-institutional use, in that it’s still a way for members to demonstrate to party leadership and the steering committees and to their colleagues that they are team players,” Currinder said.
The report, by the Campaign Legal Center and Issue One, says that lawmakers routinely use leadership PAC money to support a “lavish” lifestyle of mingling with donors and supporters. Fundraisers held at exclusive golf clubs and beach and ski resorts were common expenditures, the report says.
Yet the amount each leadership PAC spends to support other campaigns and candidates varies widely, the report finds. For example, during the 2016 cycle, one leadership PAC spent just 3 percent helping candidates or political committees, while another spent 97 percent.
“It is one thing to contribute to a candidate in order to support their run for office; it is another to fund an officeholder’s trip to Vegas and their stay at the Venetian,” the report says.
Lawmakers and congressional campaign aides say the expenses are par for the course and that it takes money to raise money.
Campaign aides said that determining what constitutes a “lavish” lifestyle is subjective and that any thresholds that the advocacy groups are using are arbitrary standards to decide how much leadership PACs should be contributing to campaigns.
“You want to make it so that donors feel comfortable, feel welcome and have fun. That’s Fundraising 101,” said one GOP campaign aide familiar with leadership PAC fundraising who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about strategy.The groups urged the FEC to impose limits on leadership PACs, particularly limiting expenses that could be considered “personal use.” This restriction currently applies to lawmakers’ candidate committee spending.
Without the restriction, there is room for abuse, the authors said.