Mayor Gainey's campaign funding, support raising questions from O'Connor campaign
A Philadelphia-based political organization is heavily involved in Mayor Ed Gainey's re-election effort, funding attack ads on Corey O'Connor while supplying organizers to work directly on the mayor's campaign.
Now, the O'Connor campaign is raising the question: Is the Gainey campaign violating the state's campaign finance reporting law?
It's called the Pennsylvania Working Families Party, the state's chapter of a national political organization dedicated to electing progressive candidates. And it's funding attack ads.
Under independent expenditures, political action committees like Working Families can spend unlimited amounts of money so long as they don't coordinate their efforts with a candidate's campaign.
How, then, are organizers from Working Families working directly on the mayor's campaign?
The Gainey campaign confirms that Shoshanna Israel, Elias Bartholomew, and Nick Gavin have been organizing events and strategy. In a statement, the campaign says there is no communication between those people and those making the ads, saying there is a firewall between them.
"Like all Democratic campaigns, the Gainey campaign receives support from many unions, community organizations, and political allies. All of that support is done in full compliance with local, state, and federal campaign finance laws."
"Technically, there are ways to structure that that aren't a violation of the law, but you really have to take a healthy skepticism when you take a look at that to see how that, in fact, is playing out," says independent political consultant Mike Butler.
Naturally, the O'Connor campaign is crying foul. While the PAC, Common Sense, has made independent expenditures for anti-Gainey ads, the O'Connor campaign says no one from that PAC is working directly on the campaign.
Independent political campaign veterans like Butler say the Working Families arrangement raises serious questions.
Butler says a PAC simultaneously making independent expenditures and having employees working on a campaign can be legal, but may not pass the smell test. And, he says, there are other concerns.
"I think it raises some questions of who is paying for their services. A campaign can get in hot water if it's not paying for professional services being rendered to it," Butler added.
Two Working Families PACs have made dual $5,000 direct contributions to the Gainey campaign, the maximum allowed by law.
If Working Families is, in effect, donating the work of these employees to the campaign, it would seem to exceed those maximums in the form of in-kind contributions.
Butler says to make their employment legal, the Gainey campaign could pay them directly, but in the past three campaign filings, they have not been listed under expenditures.
The Gainey campaign had no further comment.
