Wednesday, December 18, 2013

McConnell super PAC received $100K from a dead man



"A dead man donated $100,000 to a political action committee backing Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell's re-election campaign, according to USA Today. Last week, officials from the super PAC Kentuckians for Strong Leadership reported that the organization had received the donation from wealthy Texas homebuilder Bob J. Perry on June 3, almost two months after his death in April. While officials from the super PAC blamed a software glitch for inserting June 3 rather than April 12, the day before Perry died, the incident has highlighted the larger issues of political contributions from beyond the grave and campaign finance laws in general. Kentuckians for Strong Leadership has used its donations to run a pointed advertising campaign against Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes. Jonathan Hurst, a senior aide for Grimes, raised suspicion about Perry's posthumous contribution with the Louisville Courier-Journal on July 31. "This raises a lot of questions that Kentucky deserve answers to," Hurst said. "The report appears to be as dishonest as their television ads." Oddly enough, campaign contributions from the departed aren't much of a rarity, according to USA Today. Federal regulations simply limit yearly posthumous donations to $5,200 for a federal candidate and $32,400 for a party per year. In fact, the deceased have given more than $586,000 to campaigns since the start 2009. Now the Libertarian Party has a lawsuit pending before a federal appellate court that seeks to eliminate those limits entirely. "This is pure free speech," Libertarian Party attorney Alan Gura told USA Today. "A dead person can't corrupt someone.""