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Aaron Scherb, director of legislative affairs at Common Cause and a campaign finance expert, agreed on the apparent personal use question. He also told The Daily Beast that the FEC “needs to do some digging and ask what those wire transfers and checks are for.” “I can’t remember ever seeing line items like this before,” Scherb said.

“Overall, the Republican Party is on fairly shaky ground on ethical issues given who the de facto leader of their party is,” Aaron Scherb, the senior director for legislative affairs at the good-government group Common Cause, told me. “I’m sure to some extent they’re worried about being called out for hypocrisy.”

Virginia Kase Solomón will be the next president and CEO of Common Cause. Currently CEO of the League of Women Voters, she will start her new role in February and will be the first Hispanic person to lead the democratic watchdog. She succeeds Karen Hobert Flynn, who died this spring after three decades with the organization.

Top Grassroots Lobbyists Aaron Scherb, Common Cause

Stephen Spaulding, vice president of policy at the good government group Common Cause, told The Daily Beast that the Sheehy-Zinke relationship—consisting of major campaign contributions, federal contracts, and favorable legislation—was the exact kind of “pungent mix” that gives voters the impression that elected officials put corporate money over the public interest. Americans, Spaulding said, are “rightly turned off” by such relationships. “It’s what gives rise to corruption and the appearance of corruption, and the perception that the public interest is taking a back seat to a corporation’s bottom line,” Spaulding said. “It is all too common in Washington and it’s why we need to strengthen laws to guard against pay to play politics.” Spaulding, of Common Cause, told The Daily Beast that he couldn’t think of any precedent where a sitting senator owned a private company that held federal contracts. Elected officials should observe “the highest ethical standards,” he said, and argued Sheehy’s constituents deserve to know whether he will cut all ties, including divestiture. “That should include severing any ties once in office from their former business that profits from government contracts,” Spaulding said.

Impeachment has generally been held for civil officers and members of the judiciary and the executive branch, said Stephen Spaulding, vice president at Common Cause, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group.  “Anything can move quickly in the Senate if senators want to,” Spaulding said.  The punishment granted in Article I, Section 5, of the Constitution has been rare: The Senate has expelled 15 members since 1789, and the 14 cases other than Blount's occurred during the Civil War for support of the Confederacy.  “It’s a high bar,” Spaulding said.