Yesterday, I saw this little blurb on vpap about a newly registered PAC, Citizens for the Commonwealth. I took notice and checked out the donors: all Republican contributors, based on their prior donations. $275,000 – that amount of money could make a significant difference in just about any race.
Today, I saw this post about the first beneficiary of the new PAC: Republican incumbent Senator Jay O’Brien, who received a $60,000 donation in his efforts against Democratic challenger George Barker. That prompted me to take a look at the SBE website, where I see that another $100K has been donated to this PAC. Locating their payouts is a little more difficult in that you have to wade though the large, pre-election reports here.
Nevertheless, I’m keeping my eye on this – and so should everyone else. We all know how significant a role large contributions at this stage in the game can play. There’s no way to stop the contributions, but we can certainly shine light on them.
I gotta go with Mouse on this one. It sure looks like large, late donations are only a problem when they go to the other guys.
Posted by Brian | Thursday, October 25, 2007, 3:27 pmNope. Did either of you bother to see how much money the Governor’s PAC had on hand at the end of the last reporting period? Over $1 million. So it is no secret what’s going on with the Governor’s PAC. On the other hand, this new PAC is a relative big secret. You don’t see the Washington Post writing about the Governor’s PAC.
Here’s some info on the problems Bob McDonnell got into in 2005.
Posted by vjp | Thursday, October 25, 2007, 4:50 pmI still don’t get it. How is Citizens for the Commonwealth doing anything in any way similar to what McDonnell was doing in 2005?
Posted by Anon E. Mouse | Thursday, October 25, 2007, 5:18 pmVivian,
As long as they follow the disclosure rules, I just don’t see any legitimate complaint here.
Posted by Brian | Thursday, October 25, 2007, 6:27 pmJust found your blog on this: thanks for being right on top of this issue.
I spent a bit of time surfing VPAP on this too, and wrote it up for RK.
Perhaps a bit wordy, but you can check it out here:
http://raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=7454CB49DBF2EC5A021255E0D5B14061?diaryId=11204
Posted by The Donkey | Monday, November 5, 2007, 1:24 am