Thanks to some more excellent reporting by Keith Eddings of the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, we have another remarkable installment in the ongoing saga of the hit series called “How the Hell Did Paul Adams Spend So Much Money On His Election When He Didn’t Have a Job?”
When we last saw our hero, who is a freshman GOP rep for the 17th Essex district representing Andover, Lawrence, and Tewksbury, he had been hit with a fine by OCPF for taking illegal campaign contributions from his parents and his brother. Let’s recall the details from our previous post on this matter:
Rep. Paul Adams was mysteriously able to pump $50,000 into his campaign, despite not really having, you know, a job or anything. Good reporting by the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune forced Adams to concede that the vast majority of that money came from Adams’ parents and brother, after his hilarious story that the money came from his awesome investment prowess fell apart. Complaints were filed, and today, the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance announced its conclusions. Short version: you can’t do what Adams did, so the contributions were illegal.
My favorite part of that episode was Adams’ outraged commentary, which OCPF dutifully reproduced in its announcement of the penalties against Adams and his family:
The Candidate, the Candidate’s Parents, and the Candidate’s Brother are of the view that there is nothing at all perverse, unnatural, or corrupting about a pattern of family generosity rooted in the deepest yearnings of parental or fraternal hearts, and that what is unnatural, and ultimately corrupting, is a statutory scheme construed so as to prohibit such generosity within a family, and whereby parents and siblings are deprived of a most basic right to provide financial support to a child or sibling merely because that child or sibling might at some unspecified future date become a candidate for public office.
The way from Andover to Marlborough
Now, this is important for today’s episode. Because we have just learned that, in addition to funneling about $40,000 directly to Adams, the Adams family (specifically, his parents and brother) contributed an astonishing $30,000 to the Marlborough Republican City Committee in 2010 and 2011. And, no doubt by sheer coincidence, it turns out that that Committee produced and mailed $27,807 worth of pro-Adams campaign brochures – which were anonymous and therefore could not be tracked to the Marlborough folks until the spending was disclosed many months later. The Committee also spent a couple thousand dollars paying in-district canvassers for Adams, and contributed another $1,000 directly to Adams’ campaign.
And all this, even though Marlborough is about 40 miles away, and in a different county, from the district that Adams was running to represent.
Now, it’s possible that all of this bizarre activity is legal, though the Mass. Dems have asked OCPF for “an immediate investigation into questionable fundraising and spending by the Marlborough Republican Town Committee.” (Apparently, Adams is not the only out-of-district candidate that the Marlborough folks have done this kind of work for.) But if it is legal, that raises a serious question of whether it should be. Is it really OK for a candidate’s (apparently) wealthy parents and brother to give large donations to a city committee located in a distant part of the state, so that that committee can then dump untraceable campaign materials into the district? If it’s legal, it seems like an enormous loophole that should quickly be closed by corrective legislation.
Oh, but I’m sure it’s fine in Adams’ case. Because I’m confident that the facts will show “a pattern” of “generosity rooted in the deepest yearnings of parental or fraternal hearts” that, over the years, has led the Adams family to contribute thousands of dollars … to the Marlborough Republican City Committee.
Yeah, right.
and in many ways worse than what they already got caught doing.
A town committee is a PAC and has to abide by state PAC laws. You can’t just donate thousands and thousands of dollars to a state PAC in Massachusetts. $500 is the limit per person, per year.
People make mistakes on campaign finance stuff all the time, but these are no mistakes. This is brazen action that is an assault on democracy itself.
I don’t think that’s correct. According to this handy OCPF chart, an individual may contribute only $500/year to a PAC, but may contribute $5,000/year to a “ward/town/city party committee.”
Have your faithful donors maxed out?
Have them dontate to the state committee, or better yet to the a city/town committee (where you have friends) where you know it will pass under the radar.
The MAGOP got a lot of flack about spending a lot of their funds on Baker, but there is every indication that most of the money they had was raised by Baker, so it makes sense.
Grossman did some of the same stuff.
It’s just the way it’s done.
Adams however blamed his earlier issues on being a novice candidate and not understanding OCPF regs. This revelation seems to show a certain amount of sophistication and that runs contrary to that position
Rob Eno’s good friend and regular RMG blogger Paul Ferro is the Chair of Marlborough Republican Committee. Paul, Rob and other RMGer’s regularly attack Democratic politicians regarding campaign spending, yet they conspire to hide secret campaign contributions. I have no doubt this is legal–hell, the practices of banks and Wall Street that took down our financial system was legal–but the intent is clear.
The Adam’s and the Marlborough Republicans, lead by Paul Ferro, conspired to hide from the voters the origins of this support/the mailers. They simply do not believe in a core principle of Democracy and that is transparency.