Paulette Jordan, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Idaho who is vying to become the nation's first Native American state leader, has been in coordination with a political action committee in ways that may violate campaign finance rules, the Idaho Statesman reported Thursday. Jordan's team has reportedly been advising and fundraising for the super PAC, and even secured a major donation for it this month.
The Strength and Progress federal super PAC, created in July "to accept donations from the Coeur d'Alene Tribe ... for spending on Federal First Nations' issues," is allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money but is not supposed to partner with any specific campaign. Jordan, formerly a representative in the Idaho state legislature, is a member of the Tribe. Her campaign was reportedly involved in creating the PAC, which could be a problem if expenditures show that the group contributed to her candidacy.
Jordan's campaign manager, Michael Rosenow, resigned last week, saying he would rather "have no part or complacency with this PAC," the Statesman reported based on internal emails. Rosenow, along with the campaign's communications director and event scheduler, resigned suddenly after just two months, raising eyebrows about whether the departures were really a simple "leadership transition," as Jordan's campaign said. Now, emails show that Rosenow resigned over a "lack of accountability in spending and acquiring campaign resources." He felt the team was "growing a PAC" instead of funding the campaign, calling it "detestable, loathsome, if not repulsive."
Strength and Progress, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, and Jordan's campaign all say that there has been no improper coordination and that the groups are all operating independently. The Idaho Democratic Party says it is taking the potential violations "very seriously." Read more at the Idaho Statesman. Summer Meza
2020 Democrats should take these political pros' advice with a grain of salt.
After all, Danny Diaz, Beth Hansen, Jeff Roe, and Terry Sullivan's candidates — Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), respectively — didn't do so well in the 2016 presidential elections. Still, they met up with Politico to share how Wednesday and Thursday nights' debaters can avoid a similar fate.
To start, Politico asked the former campaigners how they felt when their candidates went into the first 2016 debates. That quickly pivoted into their expectations for the Democratic debates, where Roe of Cruz's campaign said a candidate would "be smart" to "have a moment against [Joe] Biden." "If they want to bring him all the way down, they ought to," Roe continued, saying that wasn't Cruz's strategy in the first debate, and that could be why the senator almost didn't make the second.
When it came to discussing which Democrat would be facing the most pressure in the first debates, the Republican campaigners were generally in agreement. Sullivan, of Rubio's campaign, said it was Pete Buttigieg and Beto O'Rourke because "those two are the most a creation of the media" and "if they can't meet expectations, it's the end of them." Biden, meanwhile, could "crap the bed" and still make future debates, Sullivan continued.
Hansen, who ran Kasich's campaign, suggested Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) would see the most pressure because she's one of the "people who voters don't know a lot about." And Diaz, of Bush's campaign, similarly thinks it's "the people who are worried about making it through the summer and being on the stage in the fall."
Find all the GOP campaign runners' advice at Politico. Kathryn Krawczyk