This is a weird one that seems to not just inch up to the line, but goes over it in trying to confuse Republican Party donors.
Central Dakota Republican Women Federal PAC by Pat Powers on Scribd
Leaders of an auxiliary republican women’s group in South Central South Dakota have apparently created a federal PAC for purposes of raising and spending money in federal races. But the problem is on the application for the Federal PAC, they’re directly saying it has nothing to do with the Republican Party while invoking the Republican Party’s name.
According to paperwork filed with the Federal Election Commission and made available via the FEC website today, despite deceptively titling themselves as the “Central Dakota Republican Women,” this group helmed by Connie Wagner and Trudy Qualm of Platte, SD, submitted the paperwork to the federal government noting on the form that under the laws governing PACs that “this committee supports/opposes more than one Federal candidate, and is NOT a separate segregated fund or party committee.”
In other words, as leaders of the local Republican women’s club, they’ve created their own private federal political action committee slush fund, given it a name that makes it seem affiliated with the SD Federation of Republican Women or the Republican party at-large, yet will do whatever they want since they declared that to the FEC that it is NOT a …party committee.
This brings up some serious questions. How much money are they going to try to divert from legitimate Republican candidates and groups to their private slush fund? Are they going to try to fool donors to just the Republican Women, or all they trying to hoodwink all Republican Donors to build their piggy bank? And who do they intend to use the funds for/against? Because if they want to donate to an indy candidate like Justin McNeal in the last election, they have no barriers to doing so.
Not to mention that in filing with the FEC, they’re not playing in South Dakota campaign finance with few rules, and easily forgiven errors. They’re playing in federal campaigning where most people work with attorneys specializing in this sort of thing. And even then, people screw up and it’s very costly.
It is very noteworthy that PAC treasurer Trudy Qualm is also the spouse of SDGOP Chair wannabee Lee Qualm. Which given that this group is falsely titling themselves a Republican Women’s group while declaring on the paperwork that they’re not, it brings it up as a factor in his campaign. Because if he’s running for party chair, why is his wife filing paperwork to set up a private Federal PAC and pretending to be a fake Republican group?
We can hope that the SDFRW or State Republican Party will get involved so as to not let this PAC lead donors to implied conclusions that could not be farther from the truth.
Qualm, enough said
Connie is Trudy’s sister. So, this PAC is chaired by Lee’s sister-in-law with Lee’s wife as the treasurer. I wonder which candidate they might be intending to support!
Their SDFRW committee is “South” Central Republican Women. So I am guessing some confusion will exist. Unless they are very clear there is separation.
[….and I’ve heard that story too, but unless there’s something to link to, probably have to redact the rest of that -pp]
And they breathe lies for gain of money. Qualms are the worst kind of politician, Christian, neighbor.
Mr. Powers, the interesting thing about this group is that they have advertised that they are going to have a meeting in Colome this next month without having the courtesy to communicate with the republican women’s group in Tripp county. They are advertising their keynote speaker is Senator Mykala Voita.