Houston Politics looks at something we haven’t seen much of in city elections – PACs that are candidate-specific instead of being centered on a referendum.
Among the topics bandied about last week was why [Ben] Hall and District A candidate Brenda Stardig (who is seeking to regain the seat she lost in 2011 to current incumbent Helena Brown) had formed specific-purpose political committees, or SPACs, as part of their campaigns.
There was speculation that Hall, in particular, may have fallen afoul of city ordinance by his PAC spending more than $10,000 in coordination with his campaign (Stardig’s had only spent $1,300 as of June 30, thus under the $10,000 limit).
The city’s rules are similar to federal guidelines on this: If a PAC coordinates with a candidate, it is capped at $10,000. If it just sends the check and doesn’t help decide how to spend it, the support can be limitless. City Attorney David Feldman said he planned to contact Hall and Stardig’s campaign treasurers to discuss the issue, given that there was clear evidence of coordination in both camps: The PACs, for instance, carry the candidates’ names (as opposed to the typically vague variety, such as Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS or satirist Stephen Colbert’s Making a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow).
Jerad Najvar, an election lawyer Hall consulted, and Susybelle Gosslee, who works compliance for Stardig, said there really isn’t any intrigue here.
Najvar points to Section 18-2 of the city code, which states, “To the extent that any candidate elects to receive contributions or make expenditures through a (SPAC) … then the (SPAC) shall be regarded as the agency of the candidate, and the actions of the (SPAC) shall be deemed to be actions of the candidate.” These actions explicitly include, ”The soliciting or accepting of a campaign contribution or the making of a campaign expenditure.”
But perhaps these candidates were seeking to get around the $5,000 limit on individual contributions, or around the limits on the amount of personal loans candidates can repay themselves using campaign cash: $75,000 in the mayor’s race, $15,000 in an at-large race and $5,000 in a district race?
No again, said Najvar and Gosslee.
“You either file a report that says ‘Ben Hall,’ personally, or you file a report that says ‘The All for Hall Committee.’ Substantively the law is no different,” Najvar said. “Filing an SPAC does not allow you to get around any contribution limits or any other limits. When you’re a candidate, you have a campaign account: It’s either filed on a COH (individual) report or an SPAC report, and it doesn’t matter which one.”
“No candidate benefits financially from having an SPAC,” Gosslee agreed.
For what it’s worth, this sort of thing is common in county and state politics, especially with Republican candidates and officeholders. Search for the finance reports for numerous Republican incumbents and you’ll find that all the action is in their “Texans For” or “Friends Of” PACs. Most of them also have regular candidate finance reports, but usually there’s little to them. I’m okay with this arrangement in city elections as long as everything gets disclosed and there are no contributions bigger than $5K from an individual or $10K from a PAC. I don’t see it as altering the dynamics of city races, but I suppose we’ll find out.