FEC Looks at Ashcroft’s Failed Senate Bid

The Federal Election Commission opened a review Thursday into allegations that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft’s failed Senate reelection campaign broke campaign finance laws last year by improperly acquiring and renting out a massive donor list.

The review comes in response to a complaint filed by Common Cause and other campaign finance reform groups. They asserted that Ashcroft’s campaign reaped substantial benefits from the valuable donor list without reporting it as a gift, as required by federal law.

But officials with Ashcroft’s former campaign denied any wrongdoing.

“Common Cause does not understand the facts of this whole arrangement,” said Garrett Lott, deputy treasurer of the Ashcroft 2000 committee.

At issue is a fund-raising list of about 100,000 previous donors to GOP causes and candidates that Ashcroft used in his bid for reelection to the Senate from Missouri. After Ashcroft lost to the late Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, who died in a plane crash weeks before the election, President Bush named Ashcroft to be attorney general.

Common Cause, joined by the National Voting Rights Institute and other groups in an FEC complaint filed Thursday, alleged that the Spirit of America--a conservative political action committee founded by Ashcroft in 1996--spent an estimated $2 million to develop the voter list and then gave it to the Ashcroft 2000 senatorial campaign.

Common Cause alleged that Ashcroft’s campaign used the list for fund raising and earned $116,000 by renting it to other political groups, such as defense funds for Bill Clinton nemeses Linda Tripp and Paula Corbin Jones. The issue was first raised in the Washington Post.

Asked about the issue during his confirmation hearings, Ashcroft said he put a stop to the practice as soon as he learned about it.

Common Cause maintains that the list represented a valuable “in-kind” gift to Ashcroft’s campaign from the Spirit of America PAC. They alleged that the two committees broke election law on two fronts: by failing to report the gift as a contribution and by exceeding the $10,000 limits on PAC donations to a candidate in a single election cycle.

Common Cause president Scott Harshbarger said that, in the past, the FEC “has had an abysmal record” of enforcing such campaign finance laws. But “we hope there’s an effort to set a new tone at the FEC. You never say never in our business.”

The filing of the complaint automatically triggered the opening of a review by the election commission, which now will give Ashcroft’s campaign and the PAC 15 days to respond, FEC spokeswoman Kelly Huff said.

Huff said federal regulations make clear that “anything of value [received by a candidate] is considered a contribution, whether it’s a computer, a desk, a car or whatever. . . . That needs to be reported.”

Lott, who also served as the director of the Spirit of America PAC, said the donor list was never a gift to the campaign. “We were fully in compliance with the law,” he said, refusing to elaborate.

Justice Department officials refused to comment on the investigation.