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| But exactly how much money flowed through Texans for a Republican Majority depends on which documents you look at. According to IRS documents, TRM received $1.5 million in contributions and spent $1.4 million during the 2002 election cycle. That’s nearly double what TRM told the state ethics commission it raised and spent, even though the Austin-based TRM was actively involved in Texas campaigns and bound by state disclosure laws. But there’s more... | | Submitted by fedup | 2007-02-04 20:17:47 | Later in the fall of 2001, TRM received $50,000 in seed money from DeLay’s Americans for a Republican Majority PAC, and $25,000 each from Ceverha’s boss Beecherl and Houston construction magnate Bob Perry. Perry (no relation to the governor) is an ardent opponent of the civil justice system, and not surprisingly, a perpetual focus of lawsuits. He was the largest individual Republican donor in the 2002 cycle, writing close to $4 million in checks to various Republican campaigns and PACs.
But exactly how much money flowed through Texans for a Republican Majority depends on which documents you look at. According to IRS documents, TRM received $1.5 million in contributions and spent $1.4 million during the 2002 election cycle. That’s nearly double what TRM told the state ethics commission it raised and spent, even though the Austin-based TRM was actively involved in Texas campaigns and bound by state disclosure laws. But there’s more going on here than reporting errors. Of the $751,285 in contributions TRM didn’t report to the state, at least $602,300 (80 percent) was corporate money. This creates the appearance that DeLay’s PAC may have poured illegal corporate money into Texas campaigns and hid it from state election officials.
DeLay aide Jim Ellis insists there is a simple explanation for the discrepancy between what TRM reported to the state ethics commission and what it filed with the IRS. TRM, he says, operated with two distinct accounts. One account, known as TRMPAC, functioned like any other PAC, raising hard-money contributions from individuals and other PACs and using that money for electioneering–all of it reported to the Texas Ethics Commission. The other account was registered with the IRS. It housed $751,285 in mostly corporate (or soft) money that went for "administrative expenses," which he says doesn’t need to be reported on the state level.
Campaign watchdogs disagree. While some of TRM’s corporate money was used for legitimate administrative expenses, much of it went for political polls and consultants. Critics argue that is electioneering and should be paid for with hard money. Using corporate cash for polling and consultants allowed TRMPAC to spend more hard money on donations directly to candidates, potentially an in-kind contribution. "If political workers, consultants and polls are ‘administrative expenses’ then there is no corporate prohibition in Texas," asserts Fred Lewis of Campaigns for People. "No state has ever interpreted administrative expenses as political workers or political goods and services."
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