They Fly By Night

[Updated:  this post has been updated.  See below.]

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has compiled the most recent campaign finance figures into a handy spreadsheet.  The big names—Education Minnesota, Alliance for a Better Minnesota, etc.—you will have heard of if you follow state politics.

One group that cracked the top 20 will be new to most of you:  DLCC for Minnesota.  Formed only in June of this year, DLCC for Minnesota is the local chapter of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.  As the name would imply, the DLCC is a political committee dedicated to electing Democrats to state legislatures around the country.  As you would expect, DLCC is headquartered on K Street in Washington, DC.

Two Minnesotans serve on the DLCC's board:  Speaker of the House Paul Thissen and Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk.  The DLCC’s man in Minnesota is David Griggs, a longtime Democrat operative who has worked for Bakk, among others.

According to records on file at the state’s Campaign Finance Board, DLCC has pumped $161,700 into its Minnesota operation since its June start.  Of that amount raised, the DLCC has disclosed that most of it ($99,000) was provided by the public employee union AFSCME.

Where did the money go?  A total of $160,950 went to pay invoices submitted by Project Lakes and Plains.  As the Star Tribune describes,

For years, Democrats have participated in a polling and research consortium, called Project Lakes and Plains, that allows them to share information.

The result is they read from the same playbook and that playbook says in the midterm election that Minnesota voters care deeply about education issues. 

In other words, Project Lakes and Plains is the entity that allows candidates, political party units, and outside groups to work together, without running afoul of election laws against coordination.  Here is a partial list of the money paid to Project Lakes and Plains in recent years,

Project Lakes and Plains Revenue
Client	2014		2013		2012		2011		2010
Alliance for a Better Minn.	164,279		22,500		255,000				124,000
MN DFL Party	10,000				81,000		59,500		163,000
House DFL Caucus	160,950				212,570
Senate DFL Caucus					121,930
DLCC for Minnesota	160,950
WIN Minnesota Federal PAC	14,900		9,000
Al Franken for Senate			9,000
Total (2010-2014)	$ 1,568,579

What is unusual about the DLCC situation is that the Democrats appear to have created an entity purely for the purposes of paying some of Project Lakes and Plains’ bills, invoices that had previously been paid by other party units.

Curiously, on the same day the DLCC created the Minnesota Fund, it created a separate Victory Fund PAC.  The Victory fund has taken in over $164,000 from just 10 individual donors.  Nine of the 10 donors are out of state and include the well-known Tim Gill and James Hormel.  The Victory Fund is still holding $147,000 in cash on hand.  Its only expenditures have been to send small amounts of money out of state, to Michigan and North Dakota.  So far, not a single dollar of the fund has been spent in Minnesota.

The largest donor—giving slightly more than half of the Victory Fund total—is computer scientist and businessman John Koza, who heads up the National Popular Vote effort.

It’s amazing the places you’ll go when you follow the money.

[Update:  It turns that the June 2014 creation of the two MN DLCC entities is no mystery.  It fulfills the terms of a settlement between the Campaign Finance Board and DLCC arising from a complaint filed two years ago by the state Republican Party.]