Catch the candidates if you can
They are being called the “uncandidates” — presidential aspirants campaigning now in plain sight and filling their coffers even as they skirt campaign finance law by coyly insisting they have not yet formally declared that they are running. This is an insult to voters being promised straight talk by the busy uncandidates, who cynically know they have little to fear from government enforcement of money caps on their undisguised campaigning.
Complaints about this evasion were filed last month with the Federal Election Commission by two nonpartisan watchdog groups, the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21. They claim that the growing practice of remaining undeclared while scooping up money is not just deceptive but illegal.
The FEC, the supposed referee of elections, has long been hamstrung by partisan gridlock largely engineered by Republican commissioners. So voters shouldn’t expect much enforcement. But the groups’ complaints present a clear warning about a 2016 presidential contest already deep into fund-raising mischief and “dark money” donors.
The uncandidates cited in the complaint are Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Rick Santorum, all Republicans, and Martin O’Malley, a Democrat. Their campaigns insist they have been strictly following federal campaign law. But the watchdog groups properly complain that, based on the candidates’ activities, they should be registered with the commission and subject to so-called testing the waters regulations that limit individual contributions to $2,700, not the $100,000-a-head donations that some presidential hopefuls have been collecting at partisan dinners.
Mr. Bush stands to benefit separately from a new campaign twist by which a supposedly “independent” nonprofit policy group created by a friend and former staff member will be free to raise unlimited donations and keep its contributors secret. The group, which is tax-exempt, will be closely intertwined with the Bush campaign, according to The Washington
Post, which found it quietly registered in Arkansas. The group insists it will operate as a “social welfare” organization, not as part of the Bush machine. That’s hard to believe, considering that the name of the group — Right to Rise Policy Solutions — is echoed in Mr. Bush’s two Right to Rise PACs.
The use of nonprofit groups for partisan politics has been growing in recent elections as the Internal Revenue Service has failed to draw firm lines against blatant politicking. The creation of a proBush group floated by secret donors can only advance the nonprofit guise further, and rivals can be expected to match the deviousness with little to fear from the IRS or the FEC.
However unknown the 2016 election outcome is right now, it’s clear that a torrent of unregulated and secretive money is already setting a woeful pace.