11.22.2006

Did Van Hollen Break Federal Law?

Crawford's Take has the goods here.

Long story short. In a blog post, one of his election workers admits to dropping lit saying, in essence, it is OK to vote for Doyle and Van Hollen.

The money quote:

We targeted Doyle donors who were already likely to go to the polls.


That is illegal. Donor information is public for the purpose of disclosure only. It is illegal to use that for your own targeting and fund-raising.

I hope someone looks into this.

2 comments:

Al said...

I think most people are really over-reacting to this, and I'm surprised that ordinarily sensible people such as yourself are falling for this.

First of all, the guy who posted this, Bruce Fraley, isn't just a random campaign worker, he's the second in command at the Van Hollen campaign. I don't think that someone near the top of a campaign would be so brazen as to brag about committing illegal activities.

Second, the flyer, which Fraley has posted a PDF link on his website, doesn't ask for money, it simply says that you can be a good Democrat and vote for Van Hollen, and that over a dozen Democratic District Attorneys plan to do the same. My interpretation of the federal document that Crawford's Take has posted is that you cannot use an opponent's finance report for soliciting money. It doesn't say anything about soliciting votes.

I guess I do find it a bit hard to believe that Van Hollen campaign workers drove around Dane and Milwaukee counties looking for houses with a Doyle sign but no Falk sign. They probably did use campaign finance lists. But, again, that appears to be legal as long as one is not asking for donations.

Al said...

I meant to throw the link in there. Here it is:

http://graphics.jsonline.com/graphics/news/img/nov06/spice111506.pdf