Sen. Joni Ernst, Republican from Iowa, has been using an outside dark-money group for fundraising and has potentially been illegally coordinating with it, the AP reports. The group, called Iowa Values, was co-founded in 2017 by an Ernst consultant, Jon Kohan. Her personal campaign fundraiser, Claire Holloway Avella, also works for Iowa Values. Finally, another former aide who was recently hired by the group owns a condo that is used as Iowa Values’ address, and was used as the group’s address while he was still working on Ernst’s Senate staff.
Dark-money groups like Iowa Values are supposed to operate separately from candidates. They are also supposed to function as nonprofit educational or issue groups that have activities beyond promoting individual candidates. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, but there’s always some fudging. In Ernst’s case, it appears to go well beyond fudging. The AP found a request from Holloway Avella for $50,000 to an individual Ernst had just met with and referred.
Holloway Avella emailed the potential donor, writing, “As you may have seen, an outside group on the left ... recently launched a six-figure ad buy in media markets across the state attacking Senator Ernst on her vote to repeal Obamacare.” She added, “The purpose of our group, Iowa Values, is to push back against these type of negative attacks.”
“It seems like pretty strong evidence” that the $50,000 request was for an “illegal donation,” while it’s “clear that the goal of Iowa Values is to reelect Joni Ernst, which may violate its tax-exempt status,” said a campaign finance attorney, Brendan Fischer, with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. “This is a striking example of how secret campaign money operates. The big donors that bankroll a dark money group like Iowa Values remain hidden from the public, but the politician that benefits knows where the money is coming from.”
This is very, very stinky. But Ernst doesn’t have to worry about it too much. Her boss, Moscow Mitch McConnell, has ensured that the Federal Election Commission has no teeth to do anything about these kinds of violations. It doesn’t have a quorum of commissioners to act now because he hasn’t allowed votes for new ones.
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