Romney Leans on State PACs to Finance Run
The New York Times reports:
The fact that Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is weighing a run for president in 2012, has an active political action committee in Alabama might seem puzzling.
It is, after all, not a critical early-voting state for the Republican nomination, where these kinds of leadership PACs are often set up by potential presidential candidates.
Upon closer inspection, though, Mr. Romney’s interest in Alabama snaps into focus. The state has among the most permissive campaign finance rules in the nation, allowing contributions of unlimited size from individuals and corporations.
As a result, the Alabama affiliate of Mr. Romney’s federal PAC, Free and Strong America, has raised more than $440,000 this year, with many of the contributions amounting to tens of thousands of dollars each.
Yet it has donated $21,500 — less than 5 percent of what it has raised — to state and local candidates in Alabama, for which these state PACs are ostensibly intended. (The PAC also contributed $3,500 to Nikki Haley’s successful campaign for governor in South Carolina.)
Instead, a vast majority of the just over $300,000 Mr. Romney’s Alabama PAC has reported spending this year has been directed back to the Boston headquarters of Free and Strong America, paying for, among other expenses, a significant part of the salaries of Mr. Romney’s political staff, who will almost certainly form the core of his presidential campaign if he decides to run.
The financing Mr. Romney has used, leaning on not only his Alabama PAC but also on similar vehicles in other states, allows him to tiptoe around federal campaign finance limits. It also illustrates how potential candidates willing to be creative with the nation’s Rube Goldberg-like campaign finance system can manipulate it to their greatest benefit — and Mr. Romney has been by far the most assertive in this approach among those believed to be weighing bids for the Republican nomination.
Leadership PACs cannot, by law, be used to finance a presidential run, but they can distribute money to other candidates, help pay for travel and even finance the nucleus of a political operation. In the process, the PACs must be careful not to cross over into actually footing the bill for a presidential candidacy.
Mr. Romney is testing these limitations, as are other potential 2012 contenders, like Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, who has set up state PACs in Iowa and New Hampshire, along with a federal PAC. But Mr. Romney has gone further in squeezing maximum legal advantage in other areas.
It is generally illegal for a state-based PAC, like Mr. Romney’s Alabama affiliate, to finance activity geared toward federal elections. In other words, money raised by the state PAC is not supposed to be used for work on federal races, as opposed to contests at the state and local level.
