More Lack Of Accountability Through ActBlue
I recently wrote about Carolyn Maloney’s very odd payment of 5,000 to an insurance company from her leadership PAC. I came to scrutinize Maloney’s PAC activities after following a link to the committee from ActBlue, an organization that claims to facilitate greater grassroots influence over Democratic politicians by helping people to make campaign contributions
Another quick look at the leadership PACs ActBlue links to finds many more shenanigans. Consider, for example, the Committee for a Democratic Future. It’s a political action committee with a very idealistic sounding name, but with a set of activities that seem designed more toward the accumulation of power.
The PAC is operated by U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro, but has yet to provide any support for any Democratic congressional candidates in the 2010 election cycle. The PAC has, however, made several payments to the Federal City Caterers, for a total of $15,451 this year so far. The PAC has paid for thousands of additional dollars of catering, over and over again, in years past. Buying food for political insiders is what most of the PAC’s money has gone toward this year.
What on earth is all that catering – sometimes thousands of dollars worth at a single time – being used for? One thing is fairly obvious – all that catering isn’t creating a Democratic future. A political class in Washington D.C. is literally being fed by leadership PACs such as DeLauro’s, helped in part by ActBlue money.
These leadership PACs are in turn being paid for by donations made by corporate lobbyists who pay to attend yet more meals, such as a pizza party at DeLauro’s home in July, and a breakfast DeLauro organized this September. Lobbyists had to pay between 1,000 and 5,000 dollars to attend those meals, checks written to the Committee for a Democratic future, and they weren’t paying for the food.
When ActBlue encourages grassroots activists to write checks to funds like the Committee for a Democratic Future, they’re encouraging the persistence of political machines that are designed to avoid citizen accountability, rather than to enhance it.
