Friday, August 08, 2008

POLITICS - Follow the Money

The following is an example of why big money is corrupting our elections. This is really NOT about McCain but it IS about Harry Sargeant III and Mustafa Abu Naba’a.

"McCain to Give Back $50,000 Under Scrutiny" by MICHAEL LUO, New York Times

Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign said Thursday that it would return all the contributions solicited for it by the Jordanian business partner of a prominent Florida fund-raiser for Mr. McCain.

For the McCain camp, the decision caps a queasy two days in which news accounts scrutinized a cluster of more than $50,000 in unusual contributions from a single extended family of Californians, the Abdullahs, and several of their friends.

The bundling of the donations was initially credited by the campaign to Harry Sargeant III, finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party and part-owner of a major oil trading company. But they were actually solicited by Mustafa Abu Naba’a, a longtime business partner of Mr. Sargeant.

The donations came under scrutiny because of their large size and the fact that for the most part, the Abdullahs do not appear wealthy. In addition, several of them interviewed expressed indifference or even hostility to Mr. McCain’s candidacy.

All this taken together has raised the question of whether at least some of the family and their friends may have been donors in name only who were reimbursed by someone trying to skirt individual contribution limits.

“We are taking the precautionary effort of returning any and all contributions that were solicited by Mr. Abu Naba’a,” said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign. “We had an issue with the idea there were people giving to the campaign who had no intention of voting for or supporting John McCain.”

Earlier Thursday, the campaign said it was reviewing all the donations collected by Mr. Sargeant, who has raised more than $500,000 for Mr. McCain. The campaign said it would send a letter to all of Mr. Sargeant’s donors reminding them of a variety of restrictions, among them that campaign contributions may not be reimbursed and may not be made by foreign nationals.

If a donor has failed to meet those standards, the campaign said, it will arrange for a refund.

Given that Mr. Abu Naba’a is a foreign national, some Democratic officials questioned the legality of his bundling money for Mr. McCain. But several election law experts who were consulted said that while foreign nationals were clearly barred from making donations themselves, federal statutes did not explicitly forbid them to solicit contributions. They do come close, though.

In 2004, the Federal Election Commission considered the case of Zury Ríos Sosa, a Guatemalan who was the fiancée of Representative Jerry Weller, Republican of Illinois. The commission issued an advisory opinion that said Ms. Ríos, as an “uncompensated volunteer” for Mr. Weller, could “solicit funds from persons who are not foreign nationals.”

Nevertheless, Paul S. Ryan, a lawyer at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said there seemed to be some tension within the opinion, because it cites a regulation that says foreign nationals shall not “directly or indirectly” play a role in the “decision-making process” of any person’s “election-related activities,” including the making of contributions.

Mr. Ryan said that if he were representing the McCain campaign, he would seek an opinion from the commission.

Mr. Rogers, of the McCain campaign, said its lawyers believed that the bundling by Mr. Abu Naba’a was permissible. The campaign decided to return the money, he said, because “it just didn’t sound right to us, the whole situation.”

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