By The Prowler on 7.3.07 @ 12:08AM
Cutting corners in a presidential campaign. Also: Fortney's complaint. Plus: Where's Judy?
CUTTING CORNERS
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is poised to open an
investigation into the endorsement of former Arkansas Gov.
Mike Huckabee by the Homeschool Legal Defense
Association Political Action Committee, after email traffic and
other materials from the group were passed to the Commission by
several rival campaigns.
The HSLDA PAC last week planned to endorse Huckabee, but all of
the internal email correspondence and notification of the
endorsement took place, not via the HSLDA PAC, which can legally
endorse, but the 501c3 HSLDA nonprofit, which is barred from overt
political activity, such as fundraising for a candidate or
endorsing.
All email traffic related to the letter's creation, editing, and
distribution, as well as email of all of the draft materials that
were forwarded to the Huckabee campaign for approval and editing,
took place on HSLDA.org email addresses. One other email address
was linked to Patrick Henry College.
The draft letter of endorsement, obtained by The American
Spectator, clearly lays out ways HSLDA members can fundraise
and donate to the Huckabee campaign, which has been financially
floundering for months. In this year's first fundraising cycle,
Huckabee's campaign raised less than $600,000. The endorsement
letter read, in part:
We have taken this historic step of an early
endorsement because the process of electing our President is based
on a radically different timetable in this election. The vast
majority of the primaries will be earlier than ever. If we do not
act now, all conservatives will be driven from the race by lack of
funding and we will be left with only unacceptable choices.
Thus, we urge our members to do four things:
1. Listen to our interview with Mike Huckabee and Mike Farris.
(Link).
2. Support Mike Huckabee in your state's presidential primary
(or other nomination process).
2. [sic] Please pray for him on a regular basis.
3. [sic] Please consider volunteering for his campaign. Here is
a link to his campaign website.
4. [sic] Please make a donation TODAY to his campaign. (link).
Do not think that it is insignificant because you cannot give
thousands of dollars. A campaign like Huckabee's will only work
when thousands of friends network together giving, $25, $50, $100,
or even just $10 each. Frankly a campaign that receives $25 from
10,000 people is far stronger than a campaign that receives $10,000
from 25 people.
"It doesn't appear from the materials we've been given that HSLDA
PAC was involved in any way with the planning of this endorsement,"
says an FEC staffer. "Everything was through the nonprofit arm. It
doesn't appear that these folks even attempted to build a firewall,
so it makes us wonder about coordination."
This wouldn't be the first time Huckabee ran into ethics issues.
As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee, according to the Associated
Press, faced 14 separate ethics complaints against him and his
administration, with five resulting in findings that he violated
ethics guidelines.
"Sometimes operations just don't change," says a paid consultant
for a rival campaign to Huckabee's. "When you're desperate enough
for support, you'll cut corners. That appears to be what Huckabee's
campaign has done in this case. Going back to his time as governor,
he appears willing to cut corners."
A staffer for the Huckabee campaign denied that it had ever seen
the HSLDA materials or approved them. "This is complete surprise to
us, we had no coordination whatsoever," says the source.
PROFILE IN COURAGE
Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark (D-Calif.) accepted more
than $1.3 million in political contributions from health insurance
and health care companies between 1996 and 2006, according to
campaign finance records. Nonetheless Stark and his staff served a
key research resource for agitprop filmmaker Michael
Moore's attack film on the American healthcare system,
Sicko.
JUDY GIULIANI WATCH
A Republican presidential campaign that is struggling to stay
afloat has been mulling an online game of "Where's Judy?" -- a
takeoff on the "Where's Waldo?" children's book.
"No one has seen Rudy Giuliani's wife in a few
weeks, we're kind of worried about her," says a cynical staffer for
the rival campaign. "She was such an integral part of the
operation, now she's nowhere to be found. If our supporters can
help find her, we'd like to offer our help."
topics:
Health Care
