Super PACs spend big on campaign perks

Acting as shadow campaigns, the political committees backing the major presidential candidates supported them with tens of millions of dollars in chartered planes, luxury hotel suites, opposition research, high-priced lawyers and more, spending reports showed Friday.

The reports show that the super PACs rushed to raise and spend a large amount of money this spring in the months before many candidates formally declared they were running for president.

Campaign disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission showed how far the candidates went in outsourcing many of their traditional campaign operations to super PACs, which face much looser regulation.

The super PACs, which have dominated the fundraising landscape in the 2016 campaign, reported that they had raised a total of at least $245 million this year, with individual donations of $1 million or more to Jeb Bush; Hillary Rodham Clinton; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and others.

While the super PACs maintain that they complied with all fundraising laws, watchdog groups denounced the spending detailed in the reports as evidence that many of the candidates were improperly circumventing limits on fundraising in the run-up to the beginning of their official campaigns.

While donations to the candidates themselves are capped at $2,700, wealthy donors were able to give unlimited amounts to the super PACs supporting them -- with a top contribution of $11 million given to Cruz's committee by hedge fund investor Robert Mercer.

Expense reports filed Friday by the political committees cataloged almost anything a candidate might need to run a campaign -- from luxury hotel room rentals and catering to pricey advertising campaigns, website development and office supplies.

The super PAC supporting Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, for instance, reported the donation of the use of a chartered jet valued at $70,000 from billionaire supermarket owner John Catsimatidis.

Priorities USA, the super PAC supporting Clinton, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers, accountants and political consultants like Paul Begala, a longtime Clinton friend and adviser.

Another committee backing Cruz went big on fundraising phone calls, spending $60,000 in a span of a few weeks to ring potential donors for more money, the filings showed.

A committee backing former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee paid more than $28,000 for film shoots. One supporting Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky bought $45,500 in advertising time. An organization behind Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina spent almost $33,000 on lawyers. And the super PAC supporting Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey paid $28,402 to buy mailing lists.

But no one came close to raising or spending as much money as the two super PACs supporting Bush, known as Right to Rise USA and Right to Rise PAC.

Bush's political groups reported raising more than $108 million -- and spending more than $10 million, often on catered fundraisers that Bush personally attended to meet and have photos taken with wealthy donors.

The Bush committees' tabs included a $28,000 catering bill at a Chicago event; tens of thousands of dollars in rentals and rooms at high-end hotels like the St. Regis in Houston and the Four Seasons in Palo Alto, Calif.; and valet service at events in San Francisco, Washington and Coral Gables, Florida.

Printing and mailing campaign literature totaled about $809,000.

Bush's committees even gave back about $170,000 in donations from 18 big donors. The committees refused to say why they were returned.

Paul Ryan, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center, a campaign finance watchdog group in Washington, said the campaign filings "confirm what I suspected about Jeb Bush -- that he used his super PACs to raise and spend massive amounts of money in violation of the law." His group has brought complaints against Bush and other candidates accusing them of violating fundraising limits.

But Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the Right to Rise committees, scoffed at the allegation.

"Right to Rise takes a conservative approach to FEC rules, and we are in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations," Lindsay said in an email.

"Our expenditures for six months of Right to Rise fundraising costs and fundraising events are minimal given the scale of our support from donors who have been drawn to Gov. Bush's conservative record of reform," he said.

A Section on 08/02/2015

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