VA Dems violating state campaign contributions law or just a false alarm?
Via their Twitter feed, I saw this post over on Bearing Drift this morning regarding the Democrats’ continued fundraising efforts in Virginia in violation of State law. The post refers to a blog called “VBDems.org” and points to a sidebar widget that allows visitors to contribute to the election campaigns of several Democrats running for election or re-election. Brian Kirwin at Bearing Drift writes, basically, that this is a violation of state law, specificaly § 24.2-954.
This came as a surprise to me since, right up to this moment, there’s a similar set of widgets over there on the right-hand sidebar here at HoodaThunk? doing something similar for GOP candidates listed on RedStorm PAC. When I read this, I went to the link for the law in question and read up on it. The prohibition applies to currently-sitting members of the General Assembly and to statewide officers such as the Governor and Attorney General. (It does not apply to people not currently sitting in one of those seats, so someone like Pat Herrity who’s running for Chairman of Fairfax County can solicit contributions just fine.) OK, with that understanding I became concerned that we on the right, via RedStorm, were guilty of the same thing. So I clicked the link on my widget to be taken to RedStorm PAC so I could see what happened. I was immediately presented with a page that showed that RedStorm isn’t currently accepting donations to these campaigns, specifically citing § 24.2-954. That would seem to cover compliance with the law.
With that test out of the way, I went to VBDems.org and to ActBlue, the contribution site itself, and checked out several of the people listed there. It appears that ActBlue isn’t accepting donations for currently-seated members of the General Assembly, either. They’re accepting for other folks but they do not appear to be in violation of the law. So, the only question that remains is whether VBDems.org, by virtue of having that widget displayed on their site, are guilty of “aid[ing], abet[ting], and participat[ing]” whether the contribution is actually accepted or not. And if they are, then so am I.
Any thoughts, anyone?
