Three lawmakers from Minnesota have requested extensions for filing mandated financial disclosure reports.

The reports, by Rep. Michele Bachmann and Rep. Chip Cravaack are due on Aug. 12, according to MPR. Sen. Al Franken’s is due on Aug. 15, according to his staff. For Cravack and Bachmann, it’s the second extension they’ve requested since the original June deadline. Franken also requested an extension last year.

The disclosures made in the reports include lists of investments, income, property and sponsored travel.

Cravaack, who was elected to Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District last year, has yet to file a financial disclosure.

In Bachmann’s 2010 filing (see PDF below), she listed only the income from Bachmann & Associates, the clinic she and her husband run. She also listed her husband’s family farm in Independence, Wis., as an asset. Both the clinic and the farm have collected payments from the federal government, which could prove to be a liability in Bachmann’s so-far successful run at the Republican nomination for president.

Franken also requested an extension last year. His assets last year included Al Franken, Inc., which he valued at between $500,000 and $1 million.

Bach Mann 2010 Disclosure

“The Communications Act of 1934 permits a federal candidate receiving the lowest unit charge to air a television ad that makes direct reference to another candidate for the same office only if, at the end of the broadcast, both a photo and disclaimer from the candidate appear for no less than four seconds,” the DFL said in a statement on Monday. “Representative Bachmann’s disclaimer in her most recent ad does not comply, as her image does not appear anywhere at the end of the advertisement.”

The DFL called the ad “illegal.” In a letter to station managers, the party said that the rules being violated are not those of the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) but the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

“At every turn, Beau, the actor guy, has backfired on Michele Bachmann,” said DFL spokesperson Donald McFarland. “Representative Bachmann’s ads are false, misleading, and now they’re even illegal. Minnesotans can’t trust Michele Bachmann or her actor to tell them the truth, just like they can’t trust her to work for them in Congress. Tarryl Clark isn’t hiding behind actors, because she stands with the people of the sixth district.”

Here is the DFL letter to television stations:

Bachmann-Ad-Letter

The main reason: Under Minnesota law, he can’t.

Gary Goldsmith, executive director of the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, tells the Minnesota Independent:

Minnesota Statutes Section 10A.27, subd. 9(c) prohibits a state candidate from accepting any contribution from a federal candidate’s committee.  This would prohibit transfer of any candidate’s federal committee funds to the a state office committee of the same candidate.

Even if such transfers were allowed, they couldn’t come from the campaign committee Coleman formed to take his recount showdown with Franken to Minnesota courts. Coleman terminated his recount committee last fall, according to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).

The only federal Coleman committee that is current in FEC records is “Coleman for Senate 08.” That committee last filed a financial report in October, when it had $91,621 on hand. (The FEC found donor information in the October report to be lacking; the campaign has until next Tuesday to send in complete info.)

Coleman for Senate 08 got nearly $6,000, and the Republican Party of Minnesota nearly $30,000, from the Coleman Minnesota Recount Committee in its last days of operation last September.

Update: Coleman announced on Jan. 17 that he won’t be entering the governor’s race in 2010.

Image: Kirsten Hartsoch

So much for states’ rights: Iowa-based American Future Fund wants the Federal Elections Commission to rule against Minnesota’s long-standing ban on robocalls in order to include Minnesota in its national robocall campaigns, the Star Tribune reports. The group, which bills itself as a “conservative and free market” operation, filed a complaint with the FEC arguing that Minnesota’s anti-robocall law did not apply to national campaigns.

AFF, which has close ties to the Swift Boat Veteran for Truth, got its start in 2008 doing advertising for former Sen. Norm Coleman’s reelection campaign and has gone after DFL Rep. Collin Peterson on health care reform.

If AFF succeeds in convincing the FEC that federal law trumps Minnesota’s, the group’s automated phone messages would be the first legal political ones in Minnesota since 1987.

But Attorney General Lori Swanson says her office will fight to keep robocalls illegal. “We do not believe Minnesota … is preempted by federal campaign finance law and expect to be submitting a letter to the FEC on Monday expressing our position,” attorney general spokesman Ben Wogsland told the Star Tribune.

Paulsen won the Third Congressional District post last year with 48 percent of the vote. He has no announced challengers for next year’s contest. The Cook Political Report classifies the district as “likely Republican” in 2010.

Third quarter filings are due at the FEC today. Fundraising tallies for three other members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation have so far been posted on the agency’s web site. St. Paul Democrat Betty McCollum brought in $136,000 during the three-month period and reported $128,000 in the bank. Fellow DFLers Collin Peterson and Jim Oberstar reported raising $108,000 and $193,000 respectively. Peterson had $547,000 cash on hand at the end of September, while Oberstar had more than $1 million in reserve.

Photo: MnIndy

Two outside organizations and Norm Coleman’s re-election campaign illegally coordinated advertising that aided Coleman via a political consultant they all shared, the Minnesota DFL Party charged in a complaint to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).

No, they didn’t, the FEC has ruled.

The DFL complaint (pdf) goes back almost a year, to an August 2008 television ad from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce attacking Franken’s position on the Employee Free Choice Act. A month later, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) SAFE Trust paid for a full-page ad in Twin Cities daily newspapers claiming Franken would raise taxes.

FLS Connect, a political consulting firm owned by Coleman pal Jeff Larson, counted both groups as clients, along with Coleman. The DFL asked the FEC to investigate whether Larson acted as linchpin in a secret scheme that gave Coleman a role in the three Chamber commercials and the NFIB’s ad, in violation of federal law.

Every election season brings a wave of complaints to the FEC, some of which get dismissed without further inquiry, a commission spokesman told the Minnesota Independent today. The FEC investigated the DFL’s suspicions but found nothing to support them, releasing findings to the parties in May (pdf) before commissioners certified the results last month on a 5-0 vote (pdf).

The FEC found that the two groups and Coleman did share Larson as a vendor — but no evidence that Larson worked on the advertisements.

Larson figured in another controversy that dogged Coleman during the campaign, also the subject of a DFL complaint: the low rate at which Larson leased a basement apartment in Washington, D.C. to Coleman.

Here are two of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce TV ads attacking Franken. First, on the Employee Free Choice Act:

On taxes:

Coleman got the minimum number of commissioners needed (four of six) to side with the more lenient of two draft advisory opinions released last week. One of the dissenters was Cynthia Bauerly, a recent addition who hails from Minnesota.

After promising to do so last December, Coleman finally requested an advisory opinion from the FEC about whether his campaign could pay for expenses arising from several lawsuits and ethics complaints. In civil suits filed in Texas and Delaware, Coleman friend and donor Nasser Kazeminy was accused of secretly funneling money to Coleman via a business transaction. Other complaints charged Coleman with accepting unreported gifts.

FEC spokespersons told the Minnesota Independent that — with the exception of one footnote-tweak regarding funds raised since the election — the commission adopted as its final opinion the language of Draft B, which states:

For the reasons discussed below, the Commission concludes that the Committee may use campaign funds to pay for the following legal services: reviewing the complaints to the Senate Ethics Committee; reviewing ABM’s letter to the FBI; representing Senator Coleman in an FBI investigation of alleged violations of Federal law or rules governing the office of a Senator or the conduct of campaigns; monitoring and representing Senator Coleman in the Texas and Delaware lawsuits; and responding to media inquiries.

The Committee may not, however, use campaign funds to pay for legal services representing Senator Coleman in an FBI investigation of allegations unrelated to Senator Coleman’s campaign or duties as a Federal officeholder.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington slammed the FEC for shrinking from applying federal election law to Coleman’s question and for ignoring CREW’s arguments submitted via the public comment process.

CREW did however applaud one aspect of the opinion: that, in CREW’s view anyway, the FEC was telling Coleman he can’t use funds raised for his post-election recount activities to cover outside lawsuit expenses.

But the commission seemed to go out of its way not to answer that question, re-wording a footnote to read:

This advisory opinion concerns only the use of campaign funds to pay for the requested legal fees and expenses.  Senator Coleman is involved in a continuing recount of the 2008 election. This advisory opinion should not be relied on as allowing the use of recount funds because it does not address the use of recount funds.

Coleman’s own cleverness in wording his original question to the FEC was key to his success before the FEC, CREW charged. In a statement, CREW executive director Melanie Sloan said:

To assert the Commission must put on blinders to avoid addressing any [Federal Election Campaign Act] issue other than the narrowly-tailored one raised by the requestor is irresponsible. It turns the advisory opinion process into a game whereby the requestor can obtain permission to engage in activities – and obtain immunity for doing so — by merely leaving out inconvenient facts.

Norm and Laurie Coleman (Paul Demko, Minnesota Independent)

Norm Coleman may not dip into his campaign coffers to cover all his expenses stemming from lawsuits and other complaints that allege misconduct by him or his donors. That’s the upshot of draft advisory opinions issued late Thursday (pdf) by the Federal Election Commission.

The FEC drafted two opinions to guide its consideration of Coleman’s inquiry about which legal bills federal law would let him pay with campaign funds.

Related lawsuits in Texas and Delaware contend that Coleman benefactor Nasser Kazeminy steered him $75,000 through a business relationship between a Texas firm Kazeminy controls and the St. Paul insurance firm where Coleman’s wife works. The FBI is looking into whether Kazeminy improperly paid for Coleman’s suits, an allegation that also prompted Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) to ask for a Senate ethics investigation.

Here is the question Coleman asked the FEC:

May the Committee use campaign funds to pay legal counsel for the services described above in connection with the Texas and Delaware lawsuits, the FBI investigation, and the Senate Ethics Committee complaints?

The FEC will base its decision on two draft advisory opinions that reach somewhat different conclusions.

Opinion A says the law won’t let Coleman tap campaign accounts to pay for legal representation in the Texas or Delaware lawsuits or the FBI investigation, but the campaign can pay half the costs of monitoring the out-of-state lawsuits.

Opinion B says the law disallows only spending campaign funds for the FBI investigation into matters unrelated to his candidacy or elective office.

At their June 25 meeting, the commissioners will try to reach a decision about which draft opinion, or some combination of the two, represents their understanding of how election law applies to Coleman’s situation.

Draft Advisory Opinion A:

For the reasons discussed below, the Commission concludes that the Committee may use campaign funds to pay for the following legal services: reviewing the complaints to the Senate Ethics Committee; reviewing ABM’s letter to the FBI; representing Senator Coleman in an FBI investigation of alleged violations of Federal law or rules governing the office of a Senator or the conduct of campaigns; and responding to media inquiries.

For the reasons discussed below, the Commission concludes that the Committee may not use campaign funds to pay for the following legal services: representing Senator Coleman in the Texas or Delaware lawsuits; and representing Senator Coleman in an FBI investigation of allegations unrelated to Senator Coleman’s campaign or duties as a Federal officeholder. For the reasons discussed below, the Commission concludes that the Committee may use campaign funds to pay for 50% of legal fees for monitoring the two lawsuits.

Draft Advisory Opinion B:

For the reasons discussed below, the Commission concludes that the Committee may use campaign funds to pay for the following legal services: reviewing the complaints to the Senate Ethics Committee; reviewing ABM’s letter to the FBI; representing Senator Coleman in an FBI investigation of alleged violations of Federal law or rules governing the office of a Senator or the conduct of campaigns; monitoring and representing Senator Coleman in the Texas and Delaware lawsuits; and responding to media inquiries.

The Committee may not, however, use campaign funds to pay for legal services representing Senator Coleman in an FBI investigation of allegations unrelated to Senator Coleman’s campaign or duties as a Federal officeholder.

The FEC is taking public comment on the matter until noon on June 24.

More analysis to come.

Photo: Lauren Victoria Burke, WDCpix.com

A clothes-shopping spree that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin started in Minnesota didn’t break the law, in the opinion of the Federal Election Commission, even though it was paid for by the GOP.

Palin dropped $75,062 at Minneapolis’ Neiman-Marcus store while in Minnesota to accept the vice presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention. She went on to run up an apparel tab that exceeded $150,000.

A complaint (pdf) filed last year by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked the FEC to find that Palin’s purchases violated rules against using campaign donations on candidates’ personal attire.

The commission decided today that that restriction doesn’t apply to party funds (pdf).

Also named in CREW’s clothes complaint, as an agent of the Republican National Committee, was Jeff Larson. He’s also figured in a separate Minnesota-related scandal, as the lenient landlord who cheaply rented a basement room in Washington, D.C., to former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman.

Coleman’s own wardrobe procurement, allegedly using unreported cash assistance from friend Nasser Kazeminy, is the subject of yet another scandal, now said to be under investigation by the FBI.