Senators question if ‘dark money’ is being raised to pass roads plan

Six S.C. senators are asking the Senate Ethics Committee to rule on the propriety of “a high-ranking member of the Senate” soliciting “dark money” to help pass a roads bill.

The senators want the committee to issue an advisory opinion on whether a senator can “solicit special interest groups to raise funds for a political organization not affiliated with the senator’s campaign.”

In their letter, the senators suggest the practice would violate Senate rules that bar a senator from running a “leadership PAC.”

Leadership PACs are political committees operated by legislative leaders. The most high-profile S.C. leadership PAC — operated by former House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston — raised money to help elect GOP members to the House. After Harrell’s guilty plea to ethics violations, the House and Senate banned leadership PACs.

The letter to the Ethics Committee was signed by the Senate’s Republican majority leader, Shane Massey, R-Edgefield; libertarian Tom Davis, R-Beaufort; and four freshmen — Wes Climer of York, Rex Rice of Pickens, Scott Talley of Spartanburg and William Timmons of Greenville.

No senator is mentioned by name in the letter, and the senators themselves write “we are unable to verify that the aforementioned activities have indeed taken place.”

“There is ambiguity in the law, and we want to clarify if this is permitted,” Climer said. “And if it is permitted, we need to change the law to prohibit it.”

John Crangle, director of the Common Cause watchdog group, said it isn’t necessarily impermissible for an elected official to raise money for issue-oriented advertising, even if targets other lawmakers. He cited the Great Day SC PAC associated with former Gov. Nikki Haley.

Climer was elected to the Senate with the help of Great Day, and Haley also endorsed Talley.

To answer the senators’ question, Crangle said the Ethics Committee may have to decide if its definition of a leadership PAC only covers election-related activity or a wider variety of fundraising by a legislator.

“There’s no statutory definition,” he said. “The Ethics Committee may have to decide without precedent. They have to answer, ‘What is a Leadership PAC?”

This story was originally published January 27, 2017 at 2:49 PM with the headline "Senators question if ‘dark money’ is being raised to pass roads plan."