Donors’ Dollars Keep on Giving

If you are not running for office this year and you happened to have a few extra campaign dollars, why not help out a friend? The fact that your donors thought they were helping you and not your friend shouldn’t be an issue.

That seems to be the thinking of many of our elected officials.

The original Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Act prohibited the exchange of campaign funds between campaign committees: “A candidate committee shall not make a contribution to or an independent expenditure in behalf of another candidate committee.”

But, in the 1980s, the Legislature tweaked the rule, adding: “ … except that a candidate committee may make a contribution to another candidate committee for a fundraising event of such other candidate committee.”

As the years have gone by, the rules have become foggy. Elected officials now donate or “buy” tickets to candidate’s fundraisers, and the price of those tickets has now reached the $1,000 level. It is unclear at what point a ticket becomes a contribution, and how many tickets can one buy remains to be seen.

Read more at the Lincoln Journal Star.