DailyKos.com contributions page.
On November 6th, 2015 an email was sent from campaigns@dailykos.com with Hillary Clinton via Daily Kos as the sender. The topic is very important, “let's take on the NRA”, but so is the source of money for this campaign. This article will focus on the source of funding for this petition.
The bottom of this email contains the line “Paid for by Hillary Victory Fund” and the website links to the PAC. Does this conflict with Daily Kos' own set of rules for contributions to endorse candidates?
Daily Kos has a list of nine candidates and Daily Kos itself for those who want to contribute towards progressive causes and to “elect more and better Democrats”. The first contribution rule on the dailykos.com website is, “1. This contribution is made from my own funds, and funds are not being provided to me by another person or entity for the purpose of making this contribution.” Daily Kos' own set of rules appears to disallow PACs from contributing to Daily Kos. The Hillary Victory Fund is a PAC.
Below the set of rules Daily Kos states in the semi-fine print, “ We may accept contributions totaling a maximum of $5,400 ($2,700 for the primary election and $2,700 for the general election) from individuals and $10,000 ($5,000 for the primary election and $5,000 for the general election) from multi-candidate PACs.” The important part of this Contribution Rules explanation is that it states “multi-candidate PACs”. The Hillary Victory Fund, on the surface, appears to support only one candidate and a conflict of interest with the “multi-candidate PACs” Contribution Rule as stated by Daily Kos. This is not the case.
As PACs usually go, it is not that straight forward. On October 21st, 2015, Paul Blumenthal of the Huffington Post reports, “The Clinton campaign’s super joint fundraising committee is out of the ordinary for two reasons. First, presidential candidates do not normally enter into fundraising agreements with their party’s committees until after they actually win the nomination. Second, Clinton’s fundraising committee is the first since the Supreme Court’s 2014 McCutcheon v. FEC decision eliminated aggregate contribution limits and Congress increased party contribution limits in the 2014 omnibus budget bill.” So, the Hillary Victory Fund is actually a “multi-candidate” PAC.
The first reason Blumenthal states is the most pertinent for this article, but for transparency's sake the entire reference is included. Clinton, via the PACs, has been partnering with many organizations, Democratic candidates in many races across the country, and most alarmingly with the Democratic National Committee itself. How can the DNC be unbiased when it's finances are connected to Hillary Clinton through the PACs and SuperPACs that support her?
The author of this article previously wrote about the questionable practices of PACs for causes aligning with the current candidates for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in, “The Irony and Satire of EndCitizensUnited.org”.
Daily Kos does not currently list Hillary Clinton as an Endorsement on their website, though Daily Kos is now partnered with Hillary Clinton via the money that flows into the Hillary Victory Fund.
This is where this article should end, but, perhaps, this author has misinterpreted the Contribution Rules of Daily Kos. Rule number 7 states, “This contribution is made from my own funds or the funds of an authorizing corporation or other entity, and the funds are not being provided by any other person or entity.” This appears to be in direct conflict with the first rule, which, again is, “This contribution is made from my own funds, and funds are not being provided to me by another person or entity for the purpose of making this contribution.”
PACs and SuperPACs are arguably organized to hide where the money is coming from, so by partnering with the Victory for Hillary Fund, even if it was not a "multi-candidate PAC", may not conflict with the Daily Kos Contribution Rules.
10:17 AM PT: Dark Money is not used exactly as defined, in this article.
Arguably, the whole point of a PAC is to hide those who "donate" to it. If this is not dark money as well, then what is it?
The focus of this article is to explore whether there is a potential conflict of interest with Daily Kos partnering with the Hillary Victory Fund PAC.
1:17 PM PT: To be clear, as commenters have pointed out, the Hillary Victory Fund is a Joint PAC. Not sure what that is, you're not alone.
So, the money is not as dark as it may first appear, but to think it is out in the sunshine is ridiculous. It resides on an FEC form, for those who have the time, energy, and education to search it out and analyze it.
3:25 PM PT: The title of this article has been updated. From, "The Hillary Victory Fund PAC: Daily Kos Partners with Hillary Clinton through Dark Money" to "The Hillary Victory Fund PAC: Daily Kos Partners with Hillary Clinton through Joint PAC".
3:37 PM PT: This sentence has been changed, "Daily Kos does not currently list Hillary Clinton as an Endorsement on their website, though Daily Kos is now partnered with Hillary Clinton via the dark money that flows into the Hillary Victory Fund."
The term dark money is no longer used in this article.
Thursday, Dec 10, 2015 · 4:57:57 AM +00:00
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Sterling Waters
“Paid for by the Hillary Victory Fund” in an email sent out by Daily Kos today. Please, by all means just go ahead and endorse her already. No need to worry that this is supposedly an impartial website which is partnering with a candidate DURING a Democratic Primary. Perhaps, one of her PACs will pay for the website upgrade.
