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Tuesday, September 30, 2003
National Parties Use States To Evade Campaign Finance Laws
By Jason White, Staff Writer
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The two major political parties are funneling increasing amounts of money through state political parties to circumvent federal campaign finance laws, according to a report released Tuesday by The Institute on Money in State Politics.
The practice enables the national Republican and Democratic organizations to spend more on candidates for congressional and presidential races, while state parties pick-up more of the tab for so-called "issue ads," which cannot mention candidates by name, the report found. Issue ads and campaign fundraising are highly regulated at the federal level.
"The national parties have dramatically increased their use of states parties in the past two election cycles as a means to circumvent federal campaign regulations," said Ed Bender, executive director of the Institute, a nonpartisan research organization based in Helena, Mont., that tracks campaign cash at the state level.
The report also found that national and state parties have been making straight-up trades of campaign funds to take advantage of the differing regulations that govern state and federal elections.
The study, which looked in-depth at campaign fundraising in 13 states, determined that roughly 30 percent of the $917.5 million raised by these states' parties came from national political organizations during the 1998, 2000 and 2002 elections. [Disclosure: The study was financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which also funds Stateline.org.]
Contact Jason White at jwhite@stateline.org
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