Leading this morning on the New York Times website:
In Aiding Poor, Edwards Built Bridge to 2008
John Edwards ended 2004 with a problem: how to keep alive his public profile without the benefit of a presidential campaign that could finance his travels and pay for his political staff.
Mr. Edwards, who reported this year that he had assets of nearly $30 million, came up with a novel solution, creating a nonprofit organization with the stated mission of fighting poverty. The organization, the Center for Promise and Opportunity, raised $1.3 million in 2005, and — unlike a sister charity he created to raise scholarship money for poor students — the main beneficiary of the center’s fund-raising was Mr. Edwards himself, tax filings show.
A spokesman for Mr. Edwards defended the center yesterday as a legitimate tool against poverty.
More under the jump.
I can't figure out whether this is new stuff. It certainly doesn't seem to break any ethical rules, but it just as surely does seem to bend them. In any case, it will give Edwards' detractors (on the right and left) more ammo:
The Edwards campaign declined to disclose the amounts raised or spent by the two similarly-named nonprofit agencies — the Center for Promise and Opportunity and the Center for Promise and Opportunity Foundation — since their 2005 tax filings, which are the most recent to have been filed.
One thing's clear: he's got to get those numbers out there right away. Stonewalling on this can only hurt him -- and the Democrats. The 2005 filings, according to the Times, indicated that $1.3 million was raised for one of Edwards' non-profits, nearly half of which ($540K) was (according to tax filings) spent on "exploration of new ideas."
Jonathan Prince, Edwards' deputy campaign manager, called all the fuss "patently absurd" and suggested, rightly, that working to eradicate poverty involved air travel and plenty of expenditures. And I agree; it would take a Savage mind or a Hannitybrain to argue the stupid "he can't be for the poor; he's rich" line.
But this all does sound a bit squishy -- using funds raised from non-profits to indirectly finance an embryonic, undeclared presidential campaign...
Nonprofit groups can engage in political activities and not endanger their tax-exempt status so long as those activities are not its primary purpose. But the line between a bona fide charity and a political campaign is often fuzzy, said Marcus S. Owens, a Washington lawyer who headed the Internal Revenue Service division that oversees nonprofit agencies.
"I can’t say that what Mr. Edwards did was wrong," Mr. Owens said. "But he was working right up to the line. Who knows whether he stepped or stumbled over it. But he was close enough that if a wind was blowing hard, he’d fall over it."
That's about all the fair-use quoting I can manage here, but I think it's a story worth reading. Regardless of the impact or fallout, I hope Edwards sees the light and opens the books to the public. Anything less would seem, well, GOP-like.