Remember Ann Tornberg’s excessive listing of unitemized contributions? Unitemized totals far out of proportion to what the itemized contributions were? Here’s one that’s even worse. Democratic State Representative Kevin Killer’s SD NDN Election efforts PAC:
SD NDN PAC 2014 Year end Report
Killer’s Year End PAC report noted $16,618 in itemized contributions. And an eye-popping $136,710.54 in un-itemized contributions. A closer look at the report provides some clues as to the source of much of this funding. Acting as a intermediary, it would appear that most or all of this funding comes through ACT Blue:
If you look at the itemized report on the embedded pdf file above, it appears that more of the itemized contributions came from out-of-state.
The curious part is that Act Blue South Dakota IS registered as a South Dakota PAC. So… why are these donations appearing to arrive through ACT Blue coming in as individual donations, and not listed as a PAC to PAC donation?
Regardless, it looks like most of the funds raised by Killer & Act Blue went for overhead, with over $113,000 of the funds spent on Salaries, $10,221 on Travel, $6,534 for Act Blue to act as middle-man for fundraising, and $4508 on meals.
Curiously, for an organization that raised and spent as much as they did, I’d never heard of them. At the time of the pre-general report on October 24th, they had a whopping $1000 in their account. And then just like magic they claim that from October 22nd through the end of the year, they raised well over $100,000 for their efforts.
But, there are some inconsistencies that are coming up in those claims that would contradict what was reported to the Secretary of State’s office. According to the Secretary of State:
12-27-22. Persons and entities required to file campaign finance disclosure statements–Time for filing–Violation as misdemeanor. A campaign finance disclosure statement shall be filed with the secretary of state by the treasurer of every:
(1) Candidate or candidate campaign committee for any statewide or legislative office;
(2) Political action committee;
(3) Political party; and
(4) Ballot question committee.
The statement shall be signed and filed by the treasurer of the political committee or political party. The statement shall be received by the secretary of state and filed by 5:00 p.m. each February first and shall cover the contributions and expenditures for the preceding calendar year. The statement shall also be received by the secretary of state and filed by 5:00 p.m. on the second Friday prior to each primary and general election complete through the fifteenth day prior to that election. If a candidate is seeking nomination at the biennial state convention, the candidate or the candidate campaign committee shall file a campaign finance disclosure statement with the secretary of state by 5:00 p.m. on the second Friday prior to any biennial state convention. Any statement filed pursuant to this section shall be consecutive and shall cover contributions and expenditures since the last statement filed.and..
A violation of this section is a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Notice the dollar amounts that they attribute as being raised by the South Dakota NDN Election Efforts PAC and the date in this Article from Daily KOS:
GOTV takes money and there’s not much of that on the reservations, especially at Pine Ridge. Which is why Daily Kos is asking those who can afford it to contribute to this effort.
On Thursday we raised more than $12,000 of our $50,000 goal for the South Dakota NDN Election Efforts PAC to fund the efforts for Great Plains project. Today we wanna continue that effort to buy fuel for the bus, feed the drivers, buy cash cards to support the volunteers and purchase much-needed radio time to spread the word about the GOTV effort. Everyone on the rez listens to their local radio station.
Read that here. That was on the 10th…. which was before the pre-general. So, why are there no donations totalling $12,000 reflected in the report.?
And look at this at this article from Daily KOS five days later:
Or this article which would be the “fifteenth day prior to that election” as cited above.
Just a few moments ago, supporter #10,000 gave to the NDN Election Efforts PAC, the GOTV operation focused on American Indian reservations in the now-pivotal state of South Dakota. The $124,691 raised is slightly above my initial goal of $50,000 (which I considered overly optimistic at the time), and puts us well within reach of the PAC’s entire 2014 GOTV budget of $200,000.
South Dakota Rep. Kevin Killer, head of the PAC, sends me an update on what the fresh funds are allowing them to do.
The articles claim they had raised Over $12,000 on October 10th, $71,730 on October 15th, and $124,691 on October 20th – the last day that’s supposed to be included in the pre-general report. So, why does the pre-general report say on page 4 that, as of October 20th, they had only raised $1000 from an out of state PAC, and claiming that only $41.16 had been raised in unitemized funds?
That would appear to be a very well documented contradiction. By Democrats’ own reports, the funds were in-hand, and being spent during the time covered by the report to help elect Senator Rick Weiland. But.. amazingly, none of that money is reported for the time period it they said it was raised in, via their own news reports. They only show up in they year end report due months later?
What are your thoughts? Is it time for some spot checking on reports by the Secretary of State?
Great report DWC.
Maybe we can get Rep.Hickey to file suit?
This all goes to why we need to just get rid of personal donation limits (easy to be skirted by using PAC’s as intermediaries) and have full disclosure of all donations.
Even the $100 limit is no longer relevant because of computers/online donation.
PAC to PAC donations should not be allowed. Period.
PAC if they want to spend money for independent advertising, I get that. But, money that gets funneled into non-indirect activities needs to show up with names on the candidates donor list.
full transparency.
Full transparency? Why on earth would Republicans ever be interested in transparency?
explain that remark. you put it out there like it’s something obvious, and it’s not.
Pat, why are you even shining a light on this? If ActBlue wants to plunk leftwing dollars into fry bread and long, white Cadillacs, we should let them. The Democratic reservation machine will readily eat their money up like a crisp dollar bill in a vending machine all out of Doritos.
What does NDN stand for ? Is that just the funky new abbreviated way to say :Indian ?