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: Chris Steller, Minnesota Independent

The death panels at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) work slowly. News that the FEC had killed off a complaint against former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s re-election campaign finally reached the public yesterday — nine months after the complaint was filed and six weeks after the commission put it out of its misery.

“My only complaint is it’s a little late,” Denise Cardinal, executive director of Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM), told the Minnesota Independent. “It’s good they looked into it, but it’s not very timely if  you think of everything that’s happened since then.”

The complaint’s passing was a foregone conclusion by the time it came. But how a matter that originated in October 2008 came to its conclusion almost 11 months later is a story in itself.

The world was different last December when Cardinal sent the FEC a letter requesting a prompt investigation into possible payments from Coleman’s campaign to lawyers representing him in civil lawsuits in Texas and Delaware that dated back to the final days before the election.

Back then, Coleman was still serving as Minnesota’s senior senator, as the State Canvassing Board shuffled through thousands of the nearly 2 million ballots cast in the November 2008 election between incumbent Coleman and DFL challenger Al Franken.

In mid-December, reports of an FBI investigation into Coleman’s affairs led to a staffer’s statement that the senator would seek advice from the FEC about whether he could pay personal lawyers from campaign coffers.

That in turn prompted ABM to ask the FEC whether Coleman had in fact already been paying his legal bills with campaign cash, in possible violation of federal election law.

For months during the (separate) court battle over the election’s outcome, there was no word that Coleman had in fact followed through on seeking an advisory opinion from the FEC, and it appeared ABM’s complaint was the only thing the FEC had pending in the matter.

But it’s the FEC’s practice that inquiries from candidates like Coleman take priority over third-party complaints like ABM’s, and with springtime came news that the FEC and Coleman’s campaign had in fact been haggling over documents related to his own advisory-opinion request.

In June the FEC made public two different draft advisory opinions for commissioners to choose between that to a greater or lesser extent gave Coleman the green light. A week later when the commission decided on a 4-2 vote to advise Coleman he was largely within his rights to cut checks to civil-court attorneys from his campaign committee’s (though not his recount committee’s) bank account.

That ruling made Cardinal’s complaint mostly moot. But officially it remained a Matter Under Review at the FEC.

Then in July the FEC sent ABM a letter (pdf) stating the inevitable: The complaint was dead. There was no evidence in examples ABM had cited way back in December that money had moved from Coleman for Senate to his personal attorneys — and anyway such transfers were now within the law under the June opinion.

Yesterday brought the official publicizing of the decision via the news media. The FEC issues press releases about such decisions only sporadically, in groups. Wednesday happened to be the day that the dismissal of ABM’s case was included in announcement, along with five other commission actions from the latter half of the summer.

With Cardinal’s complaint kaput and the Texas and Delaware lawsuits withdrawn, the FBI’s is the only inquiry into the matter that could still have life left in it, and they aren’t talking.

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: MnIndy

Win or lose his pending election appeal, Norm Coleman has other legal matters to worry about: several allegations contained in lawsuits and other formal complaints about improper or unreported gifts and favors from wealthy friends. And a new federal ruling in the case of another pol looks like it won’t help Coleman.

A draft advisory opinion (pdf) from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in the case of embattled U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.) allows campaign funds to be spent on “legal fees and expenses incurred … in connection with a Federal investigation into the alleged provision of illegal campaign contributions. …”

But it’s not OK to tap campaign coffers for personal matters. Visclosky cannot “use campaign funds to pay legal fees or expenses regarding allegations unrelated to Representative Visclosky’s campaign or duties as a Federal officeholder.”

FEC opinions are precedential, so if commissioners adopt this language in their final opinion, they’re likely to lean the same way in Coleman’s case. His own long-delayed request for an FEC advisory opinion on spending campaign cash on expenses related to civil lawsuit and other matters is pending but could come any time. 

A lawsuit in Texas (and another in 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.

One sign that things are stirring in Coleman’s case: an email dated last week that was posted to the FEC Web site within the last 24 hours. In it, Coleman’s attorneys clarify that they want an FEC opinion on the Texas lawsuit as filed, withdrawn and refiled last fall.

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.

Coleman has asked the FEC for an opinion as to whether federal law lets him tap his campaign accounts to cover legal expenses in a pair of civil lawsuits that allege a friend, campaign donor Nasser Kazeminy, funneled his family an unreported $75,000.

In its argument (pdf) CREW cites past FEC opinions, including one that refused to approve the use of campaign funds to pay U.S. Sen. David Vitter’s lawyers for their efforts to repel a subpoena that would require him to testify in a criminal proceeding.

CREW asserts that it would be unprecedented for the FEC to allow Coleman to pay lawyers before he has even been asked to testify:

Indeed, the Commission has never allowed a candidate/officeholder to use campaign funds to pay such legal fees before the candidate/office holder’s testimony was compelled or actually given.

At a minimum, CREW asks the FEC to deny Coleman approval for spending money from his recount committee’s account on lawsuits unrelated to the recount.  In an opinion sought be Coleman’s Democratic rival, Al Franken, commissioners ruled that recount funds may only be spent on recount-related expenses.

CREW notes that Coleman has shifted more than $300,000 from the Coleman Minnesota Recount Committee to the Coleman for Senate ‘08 account and speculates that the latter account may be mostly made up of funds from the former at this point.

Interestingly, CREW cites Coleman’s request to the FEC as having been filed April 3, the date that appears on his letter requesting an advisory opinion — rather than May 12, the date on which the FEC posted Coleman’s request on its website.

The FEC is required to reply within 60 days to a request from a candidate or office-holder. Were the FEC to start its clock at the date CREW cites, commissioners would have to issue a ruling within days of oral arguments in Coleman’s election-contest appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court set for June 1.

Coleman’s campaign said back-and-forth with the FEC over paperwork delayed a request he promised to make in December.

CREW filed a complaint with the Senate ethics committee last summer after revelations that Kazeminy paid for Coleman’s suits. The former senator’s request also asked the FEC to rule on whether he could spend campaign money on expenses related to that complaint.

Coleman received a “dishonorable mention” on CREW’s list of the most corrupt members of Congress last year.

CREW has also been a fierce critic of the FEC and its commissioners, urging President Obama to follow through on campaign promises to reform the agency.