1/1Skip Ad Continue watchingafter the adVisit Advertiser websiteGO TO PAGE At a contentious meeting Thursday, the agency deadlocked 3-3 on whether these joint fundraising ads should be permitted — effectively allowing the practice to continue.
Those committees have already been collecting money for a flood of the new, cheaper “fundraising” ads.
They started testing the idea in Montana at the end of July, with ads run by a joint fundraising committee helping GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy.
The party committees can direct donors toward these joint fundraising committees, which can accept much larger checks.
The continued practice could have implications far beyond this election cycle as campaigns and their joint fundraising committees get more creative.
In an attempt to obtain lower ad rates and get around awkward content restrictions, Republicans quietly started testing a new tactic in late July: running campaign commercials for candidates that pose as appeals for donations. Democrats requested input from the Federal Election Commission because they were incensed about what they perceived as a breach of moral and legal boundaries.
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In a heated meeting on Thursday, the agency couldn’t agree on whether to approve these joint fundraising advertisements, so the practice was effectively allowed to continue. The vote ended in a 3-3 tie.
With no limits in place, Republicans, who have been contending with a significant financial deficit compared to Democrats, are getting ready to leverage this modest endeavor into a pivotal element of their concluding television commercial campaign.
Recently, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nevada were added to the states where the National Republican Senatorial Committee and its candidates had already established these fundraising platforms. These committees have begun raising funds in order to purchase a large number of the new, less expensive “fundraising” advertisements.
Republicans are the ones who actually need this kind of workaround for spending because they are facing a large budget deficit. Democrats, however, who “unlike Republicans…asked for clear guidance from the FEC” and did not receive it, now claim they will also be compelled to employ the strategy.
And the Republicans celebrated their victory, saying, “The Senate Democrats’ attempt to restrict party speech backfired disastrously.”. The DSCC is having a difficult day, according to general counsel for the NRSC Ryan Dollar.
Democrats are able to purchase advertisements at the reduced rate provided to candidates, having raised far more money than Republicans. GOP campaign arm and affiliated super PACs, which must spend significantly more per advertisement, rely more on independent expenditures.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has attempted to close the gap by utilizing “hybrid ads,” where the candidates and the party share the cost and receive candidate fees. But those advertisements have to feature a national party or issue for half of them, which frequently results in awkward messaging. Plus, the bill must be paid for half by the candidate’s campaign.
Within the bounds of campaign finance law, the NRSC was looking for ways to more effectively curtail the Democrats’ enormous financial advantage. Dollar had been pushing for the implementation of a fresh plan. The strategy is to run political advertisements via a “joint fundraising committee,” which is a company that simultaneously raises funds for multiple organizations, including party committees and independent campaigns.
This would maintain the focus on the particular race while enabling the NRSC and other party committees to pay almost the whole cost of the advertisements. To convert a campaign advertisement into a fundraising one, the committee just needs to add a donation line at the end of the piece.
The NRSC chose to test Dollar’s proposal as financial gaps widened.
Beginning at the end of July, they tested the concept in Montana with advertisements supporting GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy, which were run by a joint fundraising committee. The entire narration for one of the group’s advertisements—which have already cost $2.8 million—comes from Sheehy. He talks about his time in the military at the beginning and ends by saying, “Join my team, give now.”. In the final moments of the advertisement, a QR code that opens a fundraising page momentarily appears.
Similar fundraising campaign commercials were launched by the NRSC and its candidates in Maryland and Arizona in mid-September. To date, joint fundraising committees in the former state have spent close to $3 million on television, while in the latter state, they have spent $500,000.
During an interview on Thursday, Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United, a liberal campaign finance reform group, stated, “This is just a really blatant attempt to bypass contribution limits, and it’s just the latest attempt by Republicans to further dismantle our campaign finance system.”. The influence of modest donors who make small contributions to candidates is being severely undermined by this large infusion of outside funds. “.
The Republicans are expected to win the Senate and only need to flip two seats to ensure their hold on power. Nevertheless, party leaders have been publicly announcing for weeks that they risk losing winnable seats as a result of their financial imbalance with Democrats. Furthermore, as Senate Democrats raise tens of millions of dollars from small-dollar donors in the final months of the election, the differences between the two parties have only gotten wider in some states.
Donors may be directed by the party committees to these joint fundraising committees in order for them to accept checks that are much larger. They provide candidates an advantage over those who must seek out small donors by enabling them to raise more money from major donors.
“I don’t know how my colleagues would vote in an enforcement matter, but there’s no end limit here, right? Like, somebody could put up a QR code for a quarter of a second and have it be completely transparent,” Democratic Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum said.
With campaigns and their joint fundraising committees becoming increasingly inventive, the practice’s effects may extend well beyond this election cycle.
Before the FEC made its decision, these were some of the worries expressed by proponents of campaign finance. Saurav Ghosh, the Campaign Legal Center’s director of federal campaign finance reform, was among those who had sent in comments pleading with authorities to declare the strategy illegal.
As much as it might seem like a technical matter buried deep in the murky waters of campaign finance, Ghosh speculated that the implications might be enormous.
