"Leadership" PACs preferred by six of 10 MN lawmakers

posted by Edward Felker, P-B Washington Bureau

By no means new, so-called "leadership" political action committees formed by members of Congress to raise and spend money on other politicians have become common on Capitol Hill. A new roundup of members who run the PACs was published on Wednesday  by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The group found at least 232 members of the 435-member House have the committtees.

Among the eight-member Minnesota House delegation, freshman Rep. Tim Walz, D-Mankato, has not formed a leadership PAC, and has no plans to do so, his political director Richard Carlbom said today. The others without the committees are Republicans Michele Bachmann and Jim Ramstad and Democrat Keith Ellison.

The four Minnesota House lawmakers with leadership PACs are Democrats James Oberstar (The Mesabi Fund), Betty McCollum (Betty PAC), Collin Peterson (Valley PAC) and Republican John Kline (Freedom and Security PAC).

Both Minnesota senators have leadership PACs: Republican Norm Coleman has his Northstar PAC, and Democrat Amy Klobuchar has the similarly named Follow the North Star Fund.

PACs have to file their own fundraising and expense reports to the Federal Election Commission. Check them out at the FEC's search page.

CREW is not a fan of leadership PACs,  because donors can use them to shower much more money on a lawmaker beyond the amounts they can give to their election campaigns. While individuals can only give $4,600 per election cycle and other political action committees can give $10,000 per election cycle to a candidate's campaign, those same donors, both individuals and PACs, can give another $5,000 per year to the leadership PAC.

The FEC has posted a handy donation limits chart  on its web site. A list of current donations to candidates by leadership PACs, is up at the Center for Responsive Politics site. Click through to see the overall fundraising and spending by the committees.

Leadership PACs are largely unregulated in how they spend that money, as long as they adhere to the limits in donations to candidates. That means they can pay for travel, dinners, staff, offices and the like.

CREW's Executive Director Melanie Sloan told me this week leadership PACs are a concern for just that reason.  "The problem with them is that people use them like slush funds," she said.