Rhode Island Democratic gubernatorial nominee Gina Raimondo and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., violated state campaign finance law by appearing in a pricey TV spot together, the state’s Republican Party alleged this week.
Reed, whose whose re-election is a virtual certainty, appears just briefly at the end of the 32-second ad to say he he approves of it. The whole rest of the ad is about Raimondo and her plan to create jobs in the Ocean State, but the state Democratic Party is using Reed’s cameo to skirt the state’s campaign finance laws.
The ad cost the state Democratic Party roughly $90,000 to air, Raimondo campaign manager Eric Hyers told the Associated Press, which far exceeds the state’s $25,000 campaign finance limit on coordinated spending. Democrats argue that the brief appearance by Reed in the ad, and the fact that the TV spot asks Rhode Islanders to vote for the Democratic Senator, means that the commercial is eligible for higher federal caps on coordinated spending. In other words, Democrats argue that state law doesn’t have to be followed if a federal candidate appears momentarily in an ad.
The Rhode Island Democratic Party “spent $90,000 on the ad, which means it made an excessive in-kind contribution to the Raimondo campaign of $65,000,” Republican gubernatorial nominee Allan Fung’s campaign said in a letter to local television stations, urging them not to run the ad.
“Even assuming arguendo that the ad should be partially attributed to Senator Reed, which is should not, he was only on screen for approximately five seconds,” the letter goes on. “Therefore, at best, you can attribute only one-sixth of the cost of the ad to Senator Reed. Even under that calculation, $75,000 would be attributed to Raimondo, and the [Rhode Island Democratic Party’s] in-kind contribution would still be $50,000 over the limit.”
“They need to follow the law correctly,” Mark Smiley, chairman of the state’s Republican Party, told AP. “That’s certainly not within the spirit of the law. If it was about Jack Reed, why is Gina even in it?”
The man behind the coordinated campaign, State Rep. Joseph Shekarchi, responded to Smiley, saying the Republican chairman “simply doesn’t know what he is talking about.”
“Because this ad supports Jack Reed, it is governed by federal law,” Shekarchi said. “It is subject to the federal coordinated spending limits and not the state’s coordinated spending limits. It must be, and was, paid for by the party’s federal account.”
The state’s Republican Party plans to file complaints with federal and state elections officials, the AP reported. Republicans also plan to address the ad in court.
Polls show Raimondo with a slim lead over Fung — a recent Rasmussen survey showed her up 42 percent to 37 percent. Raimondo’s campaign lacks robust support from the state’s public-sector labor unions because she supported pension reform as the state’s treasurer.
Rhode Island hasn’t elected a Democrat as governor since Bruce Sundlun won re-election in 1992 with 62.7 percent of the vote.
