Open Question: Mourdock Raises $125,000. Is It Allowed?
March 29, 2011 19 Comments
There was an article yesterday in Politco where U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock talked about his campaign finances and the upcoming finance reports. Mourdock says he has raised about $125,000 so far. Senator Lugar had over $2.4 million in the bank in the last report.
Mourdock also said, “People who annually give to the state party $50,000 a year have called me to say, ‘I want to help you, I want to be on your finance committee.’ And these are people who wrote Sen. Lugar a check as recently as January.” We are interested to see who and you can bet we will be watching for the finance reports to come out to figure it out.
The bigger question for us right now is if Richard Mourdock is permitted to fundraise. Many of you probably recall that there was a law passed through the General Assembly last year prohibiting state officers and those candidates for state office to fundraise during the long session i.e. a budget session. This is a budget session and Richard Mourdock is the State Treasurer.
To be clear, Richard Mourdock is a stand-up guy and we would assume that there is either an explanation or he was not aware of the rule. But we are asking the question. Is there some loophole we haven’t read in the Indiana Code that allows Mourdock to be raising money during the budget session? Lawyers, let us know what you think.
State campaign finance laws do not govern Federal campaign finance regulations.
Right, but Mourdock is the Treasurer of the State of Indiana and thus has to comply with Indiana State laws in that position. It is a problem with his current role, not a federal issue.
The law in question, 3-9-2-12 explicitly prohibits state office holders from fundraising during the long session. He’s the state treasurer and he’s been fundraising. The statute appears to offer members of the General Assembly an exemption from this law and allows them to fundraise for federal office…but reading the new statute it doesn’t look like an exemption exists for state office holders. The statute plainly states that state office holders cannot fundraise. This could be a big story.
If his department recieves Federal Funding for any programs could that be a Hatch Act Issue? Or, if he oversees any Federal Funding of any kind? I assume that the State recieves some type of Federal funding,he oversees the states budget so…..I dont kow the answer to this one,but it seems logical.
Wow! It also looks like the Treasurer could be subject to some pretty significant fines. If he has to pay double what he has already raised, that could doom his campaign. I would expect the Treasurer to be a lot smarter than this.
The statute does appear to prohibit state officers from fundraising now, but I see tow possibilities that might make the statute inapplicable here. First, federal campaign finance laws regulating fundraising for federal offices *may* preempt state law to the extent those state laws effect fundraising for federal offices. I say may because I’m not an expert on election law and haven’t researched the issue. But generally, preemption means that if Congress passes laws regulating a certain activity and intends to be the exclusive regulator, state law is inapplicable no matter what it says.
Second, the statute could be read by the courts to only effect fundraising for state offices (even though it isn’t explicitly stated).
I didn’t see any penalties for violation of the statute in Chapter 2 linked here, does anyone know what they are, if any?
It looks like the penalties are stated in 3-9-4-16(a)(11) and 3-9-4-16(f): the greater of $1000 or two times the amount raised – or $250,000 in this case. That’s some serious coin.
Since Richard Lugar may not be a registered voter in Indiana, it looks like there’s an opening here for the Democrats.
To be precise, Ogden’s story on Lugar’s residency isn’t his lack of residency of Indiana, but his lack of residency in the precinct that he votes in.
Which would mean that he is not a legally registered voter. That would should trigger similar charges as Charlie White was hit with.
Lugar is clear on the residency issue………it is much ado about nothing…and I dont usually vote for him.
The codes pretty clear on the residency requirements. Ogden is barking up the wrong tree.
After looking at the Code, I think it is incredibly poorly drafted and not clear. IC-9-2-12′s title “Prohibition on contributions to legislative and state candidates” indicates that it is regulating CANDIDATES for the IN statehouse of IN statewide office and includes current officeholders seeking one of those offices. Murdock is not a candidate for legislative or state office, he is a candidate for federal office so he doesn’t seem to fit. The fact that he is a state officeholder wouldn’t bring him under the definition because the overall statute title requires that he be a candidate for one of those offices. If the title read, “Prohibition on contributions to legislative and state candidates and office holders” it’d be different.
But, 12(a)(2) reads that there is an exemption for General Assembly members running for an office that is not “legislative or a state office” which seems to be in direct conflict with the title and an unnecessary exemption because they are clearly not candidates for ‘legislative or state office’ to begin with so wouldn’t need an exemption.
Because the Indiana legislature refuses to allow the record of debate, floor and committee statements to be made publicly available, the question of the legislative intent of this can’t be answered, so you’d look to the plain language of the statute and I think the plain meaning of the title would provide sufficient cover for Murdock from being fined if it were determined this actually applies to ‘officeholders’ and not ‘candidates’. The legislature needs to clarify this really poorly written statute rather than it being enforced as currently written, in my opinion.
The title of the code section is meaningless. Online it may say “Prohibition on contributions to legislative and state candidates”, but the insert to the 2010 Code book says simply “prohibited period.” The text is what matters, and the text refers to state office holders.
Yes, clearly we should encourage our legislative branch and those government employees responsible for maintaining accurate Code sources and language to not make any effort whatsoever to provide clear, unambiguous language that does not vary location by location to the actual constituents potentially at risk for sanction and penalty under the code provisions. What’s that? The government that could fine you published an inaccurate description on its state operated website that it is actually responsible for maintaining so you can be aware of governing laws? Too bad for you! I’m with you, Lady, I’m all for promoting incompetence, inaccuracy and lack of uniformity on the part of our state government in their role of informing people about what the law actually is.
I was going to write on this but I think SRC’s legal analysis is excellent. Though I would add another twist…the restriction on fundraising could also be deemed unconstitutional, a violation of the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court is very pro-First Amendment when it comes to fundraising.
I would also agree with Erin’s excellent comments too.
Although people like to think the law is always black and white, there are a lot of cases when they’re simply gray.
Uh, I think this has been discussed and ruled upon by the FEC already so R. Mourdock is in the clear I blieve.
Look-up the FEC advisory opinions, AO 1995-48 and AO 1993-25 at their website below
http://saos.nictusa.com/saos/searchao?SUBMIT=continue&PAGE_NO=-1
Yes, that seems to definitely settle it.
125,000? Really?