Update: I guess the McCain camp is a bit worried about this because they ! Whoops.
The straight talking maverick is at it again. He’s skirting campaign finance laws he used to support and built his maverick appeal on. This time in Ohio. It’s a shell game, really. Though legislation limits individual contributions to $2,300, McCain and his rich friends have decided to skirt a law with his name on it by creating .
has a fundraising email nailing the McCain camp on this. They are asking couples to give $50,000. They are then telling people how to go about getting around campaign finance laws which should limit a couple to $4,600. You wanna talk about arrogance and hubris. This is taking a law that you got passed, a concept that you’ve campaigned on and staked your maverick reputation on, and completely distorting it and laughing at it. Here is what they say do:
For Individuals-The first $2,300 to JM 2008, the next $2,300 to the Compliance Fund, the next $10,000 to the Ohio Republican Party’s federal account, and the next $28,500 to the RNC.
It’s not the first time they’ve done this. Not at all. It’s been a campaign strategy in the general from word go it appears.
Elizabeth Jones at the WSJ :
The idea is to tap donors for more than the $2,300 limit set by campaign finance laws. Under legislation pushed by McCain in his role as a senator from Arizona, an individual can donate a maximum of $2,300 to a presidential primary campaign and the same amount to the general election campaign…
The new structure allows up to $70,000 in individual contributions by channeling the money into different McCain-centric funds.
This “hybrid legal structure”, as campaign manager Rick Davis calls it, probably is legal under the letter (and not the spirit) of McCain-Feingold. What does appear in question is if a candidate can explicitly ask people to skirt the law in an event invitation. I think this needs to be looked at. It certainly needs to be known.
