Hotdish Wednesday: Do You Know Where Your FEC Report is? — Updated

By Robin Marty
Wednesday, April 18, 2007 at 8:46 am

We’ve all heard, by this point, how our various members of Congress have fared in fund raising this quarter. But little has been said about our sitting senators.

Wonder why that could be?

more insideIn the case of Democrat Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, it appears to be a matter of no news is…no news. According to her report, she has gone from $28,022.95 at the beginning of the quarter to $27,842.95 at the end, with no fund raising and one single disbursement.

As for Republican Norm Coleman, it’s 18 days since the end of the quarter, and three days past filing deadline, and his report still seems to be missing. We know from various reports that Coleman raised $1.5 million to challenger Al Franken’s $1.3 million. But as to who that money came from, Coleman doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to say.

Updated to add: Well, they aren’t on the Federal Election Commission site, but Coleman’s docs must be floating around somewhere else if the Associated Press has them.

While Democratic candidate Al Franken turned to fellow entertainers to raise money for his Senate campaign, Sen. Norm Coleman got help from fellow Republicans, receiving donations from more than a dozen leadership political action committees run by GOP senators.
Coleman’s latest campaign finance report, which covers activity through March 31, shows that about half of the leadership PAC donations were for the maximum $10,000, including those from the minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and longtime Sens. Ted Stevens of Alaska and Thad Cochran of Mississippi.
Politicians use leadership PACs to finance their political travel and make donations to other candidates.
Several business PACs also contributed the maximum $10,000 to Coleman, including those for Eli Lilly & Co., International Paper, the National Federation of Independent Businesses and U.S. Bancorp.
In all, the Minnesota senator raised about $470,000 from PACs in the first quarter of the year, far eclipsing Franken, who raised less than $20,000 from PACs.