By a vote of four to two, the Federal Election Commission decided today that the Club for Growth is within its legal rights to contact Sen. Arlen Specter’s donors in an effort to have them request refunds. The draft advisory opinion of the FEC can be accessed here.
The Club had asked for the advisory opinion because it wants to mail people who contributed to Specter’s re-election campaign before his April party switch. The mailings will remind donors that Specter offered refunds to those who request them. “Upon request, I will return campaign contributions contributed during this cycle,” Specter said in a press release the day he switched from Republican to Democrat this spring.
The Club’s mailers will include handy pre-printed forms for donors to send to Specter’s campaign requesting a refund, said the Club’s David Keating. “We didn’t think Specter was going to tell anyone, and we didn’t think his policy got a lot of coverage,” he told The Examiner. “In case people want their money back, we’re going to make it as easy as possible.”
The legal question pertained to the use of donors’ personal information culled from FEC documents — a practice that is tightly regulated. The FEC ruling states that the Club may use the information to make this one mailing, provided that it does not request contributions, use the same list in the future, or sell it to any other person or group.
So far, Specter’s party-switch has not worked out quite as planned. He became a Democrat earlier this year in order to avoid a losing battle in a Republican primary in which he trailed former Rep. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. by double digits. But since his party-switch, Specter has lost considerable ground in a general election race against Toomey. One recent poll has him trailing Toomey in that race by double-digits once again.
Under pressure from a left-wing primary challenge from Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., Specter has switched his position on a number of issues this year — even issues on which he promised not to switch after he switched parties. He has completely reversed his position on the Employee Free Choice Act — better known as “card-check” — and also on whether health care reform should include a government-run plan. Specter has also gone from opposing efforts to push a health bill through the Senate using the filibuster-proof reconciliation process, to supporting those efforts conditionally.
Specter’s campaign refunded about $224,500 in contributions in the second quarter of this year.
