News Clips

“Nobody is spending $2.5 million out of the goodness of their hearts,” said David Vance, a spokesman for Common Cause, a nonprofit group that advocates for campaign finance reform. “That kind of money is spent to get the attention of legislators and to get results.”

On the other side of the political divide over Koch, Beth Rotman of the government watchdog group Common Cause said the Kochs and their network of like-minded wealthy donors “undermined so many important American values over the past several decades as part of the Kochs’ attempted corporate takeover of American politics.”

“I see no way to reconcile the statement that the ‘email did not come from the Kobach campaign or any association there of’ and the reference to whoever sent the email as a ‘vendor,’ presumably a vendor of the Kobach campaign,” said Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at the group Common Cause. Ryan’s group filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice alleging “reason to believe that solicitations for campaign contributions to [Kobach’s] Senate campaign distributed by We Build the Wall, Inc. violated multiple campaign finance laws [and] the ban on corporate contributions to a federal candidate.”

“One way or the other Kris Kobach appears to have violated federal campaign finance laws through this solicitation for contributions to his U.S. Senate campaign,” Paul S. Ryan, Common Cause vice president for policy and litigation, said in a statement.

The solicitation likely violated federal campaign finance laws, according to Paul S. Ryan, the vice president for policy and litigation at the group Common Cause. “At a minimum, this Kobach for Senate fundraising solicitation email appears to violate the ‘paid for by’ disclaimer requirement” for official campaign communications, Ryan said in an email, referencing the requirement that campaigns clearly disclose the financial sponsors—generally the campaigns themselves—behind official political communications. “If the Kobach committee did not pay fair market value for the cost of disseminating this email,” Ryan explained, “then the Kobach committee has arguably committed the more serious campaign finance law violation of receiving a corporate contribution in the form of a coordinated expenditure.”

The proposal would establish “a new blueprint for federal politicians to rehabilitate their reputations after a scandal using other people’s money—specifically, using past electoral contributors’ money,” said election attorney Paul S. Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at the watchdog group Common Cause.