Complaint alleges Riley got illegal contribution
Accusation filed with the FEC says the paid fellowship he and six others received should be considered campaign donations
WASHINGTON — A complaint filed by a conservative watchdog alleges an organization acted illegally when it gave congressional candidate Josh Riley $30,000 in 2023.
The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust is challenging The American Mainstream Policy Leadership Institute’s fellowship program, which gave seven former federal candidates up to $60,000 after they lost elections in 2022. The individuals, all Democrats, were not running for office when they received the money, but five of them, including Riley in April 2023, have since announced runs for November’s elections.
The complaint claims there were “violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act by The American Mainstream Policy Leadership Institute (AMPLI) and the federal candidates who have accepted funds from this organization.” The complaint was filed against the institute and not the individual candidates. Riley listed the $30,000 he received from the institute on his financial disclosure form filed in August 2023.
The institute’s fellowship program was created to “develop and support a talent pipeline of public servants committed to sustaining democratic norms and evidenced-based public policies,” according to a quote from the institute in the complaint, and is meant to pay for the living expenses of candidates who lost elections. The complaint alleges this should be considered a campaign contribution, making the $30,000 far over the $3,300 contribution limit.
Though Riley personally received the funds — he did not have an active campaign to contribute to at the time — the complaint alleges it should still be considered a campaign contribution, citing Federal Election Commission law that states payments to individuals before they become candidates should be considered campaign contributions unless “the compensation results from bona fide employment that is genuinely independent of the candidacy.”
The campaign of Rep. Marc Molinaro, who is facing off against Riley in this year’s election after defeating him in 2022, jumped on the complaint, as well as an investigation into the institute by the Washington Examiner, with campaign manager Matt Organ saying that Riley “has now been caught taking an illegal salary,” saying it should be “promptly returned.”
FEC complaints are accusations, and the commission has not decided on the issue, which could take months. FEC spokesman Myles Martin said he could not confirm receipt of the complaint due to confidentiality requirements.
Two fundraising experts questioned whether the complaint would hold water with the FEC.
Brendan Fischer, the former director of federal reform for the Campaign Legal Center and the deputy executive director of Documented, said the complaint “raises some valid issues, but I suspect it isn’t going anywhere.”
Such organizations “cannot give money to a person because they are running for office,” Fischer wrote in an email to the Times Union. “However, the FEC has consistently allowed former and future candidates to receive compensation for providing legitimate services, if they do so independently of their campaign.”
The complaint claims the fellowship “is directly
tied to a federal candidacy and not for bona fide independent employment,” saying that the money is “for personal expenses in the brief downtime before they are able to file again to run for another office.
Fischer disagrees, writing, “It isn’t obvious that any of these former candidates were going to run again.”
“The FEC has been drawing increasingly hard lines between candidate and non-candidate status, taking the position that campaign finance law really doesn’t apply before a person begins exploring a run for office,” Fischer concluded.
Raymond La Raja, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and author of Campaign Finance and Political Polarization, said an argument could be made the payments could amount to influence-peddling, but it was undercut by the fact none of them were running when they received the money.
However, he said he didn’t see the FEC concluding that the money amounted to campaign contributions. If the FEC dismisses the complaint, “I can imagine this will be exploited as a loophole in other races, including on the right, and with higher numbers,” he said.
The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust aggressively targeted Hillary Clinton leading up to the 2016 election, according to a 2018 article in Slate, and, at least in 2015, was exclusively funded by Donorstrust, which itself is partially funded by conservative billionaire Charles Koch.
Riley’s campaign manager, Daniel Fleiss, sent a statement to the Times Union, saying the money from the institute was wellspent.
“Josh spent three months studying public policy to address the healthcare shortage in rural communities — an issue he has fought to address since the first case he took out of law school doing civil work for kids in poverty,” according to the statement.
The campaign “has not received any communication from the FEC in this matter,” Fleiss added, with the campaign adding Riley had not personally received any communication.
However, it is unknown if the FEC is yet at the point of communicating about the complaint.
The race between Riley and Molinaro, a former Dutchess County executive, is a battle to represent a swath of New York that includes Columbia and Greene counties and stretches west to Ithaca. Molinaro won the district by two points in 2022.