|
 The group shelled out $5.4 million from January through June for
all the workaday line items, from travel to catering to political
consulting, that have traditionally been paid for by candidates'
campaign committees.
The Super PAC's filing also reveals the gilded roster of Bush's top
donors, a formidable collection of some of the world's most powerful
and influential billionaires and GOP grandees, such as Coral Gables
resident and private equity king Miguel Fernandez, who, with $3
million, was Bush's top donor.
San Franciscans William Oberndorf and Helen Schwab each gave about
$1.5 million and 20 other people gave at least $1 million apiece.
With its $103 million haul, the Super PAC has smashed the
fundraising totals of every other candidate, making Bush the clear
leader in the money race, though not the polls, for the November
2016 election.
All Super PAC filings are due at the Federal Election Commission by
midnight Friday, but Bush's Super PAC was the first, and so far only
one, to file.
 The dramatic shift in spending patterns, campaign finance lawyers
say, is the starkest sign yet of a new order in money in politics,
one no longer dominated by small-dollar bundlers beholden to federal
campaign finance regulations but rather by a new, anything-goes era
featuring largely unregulated Super PACs and the billionaires,
looking to influence U.S. policy, who fund them. It is indicative of
a new playbook for how parties nominate, and pay for, their
candidates.
"These new numbers show how Jeb Bush has outsourced his campaign to
a Super PAC raising potentially corrupting and unlimited sums of
money from special interests and wealthy donors," said Paul S. Ryan,
senior counsel with the Campaign Legal Center, which has filed
complaints with both the Federal Election Commission and the
Department of Justice.
As Reuters has written, the FEC, by the admission of its own
Democratic commissioners, has been rendered ineffectual by partisan
gridlock. And the DOJ is unlikely to take up the issue during a
campaign season, department sources have said.
Right to Rise, in a statement, said it "takes a conservative
approach to FEC rules and we are in full compliance with all
applicable laws and regulations. Our expenditures for six months of
... fundraising costs and fundraising events are minimal given the
scale of our support from donors who have been drawn to Governor
Bush's conservative record of reform."
Bush campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said, in an emailed
statement: "Governor Bush has taken a conservative approach to all
of his political activities and has and will continue to comply with
all campaign finance laws and requirements."
[to top of second column] |
THE "NON" CANDIDATE CANDIDATE
Starting in January, and right up until he announced his official
candidacy June 15, Bush crisscrossed the country at a frenetic pace
in what aides described as a "shock-and-awe" fundraising push to
raise a record war chest from lobbyists, billionaires and old Bush
family friends.
But all the while, Bush insisted he wasn't a candidate, a
distinction that enabled him to operate outside the fray of federal
campaign finance regulations, which limit individual campaign
donations to $2,700.
Super PACs, by contrast, can accept any amount from anyone and are
widely criticized by campaign finance reform advocates as tilting
American democracy in favor of plutocrats with the biggest checks.
"There are now literally 100 people financing the bulk of our
presidential elections," said Craig Holman, a government affairs
lobbyist with Public Citizen, which advocates for consumers before
Congress, the executive branch and the courts.
The report also shows the Bush camp's taste for the luxe and
exclusive, with payments to the likes of the Four Seasons Palo Alto,
the St. Regis in Atlanta and Houston, the Hotel Bel Air in Los
Angeles, the Mandarin Oriental in San Francisco and the Union League
of Philadelphia.
The Super PAC, now that Bush is an official candidate, is barred
from coordinating with the campaign, but Bush’s favorite longtime
strategist and top political adviser, Mike Murphy, is working for
the Super PAC, not the campaign.
(Reporting by Michelle Conlin; Editing by James Dalgleish and Ken
Wills)
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reserved.]
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