July 18, 2014

No Coordination? GOP Super PAC Tied to WV Candidate Alex Mooney

When the Supreme Court opened the doors to unlimited corporate influence in campaigns with the Citizens United ruling, there was a small caveat in the ruling to prevent corruption: groups raising outside funds could not legally “coordinate” with candidates. Candidates begging for unlimited donations, would, after all, constitute corruption. As recent history has shown, these anti-coordination rules are easily sidestepped.

Alex Mooney, the GOP nominee for Congress in the second district of West Virginia, won his election with help from a Super PAC called the Freedom Frontier Action Fund. Disclosures show that this Super PAC was not as independent as it might have appeared.

The Freedom Frontier Action Fund, FEC disclosures reveal, was funded in part by a Herndon,VA-based consulting firm called HSP Direct, LLC. Mooney might have recognized this donor when the filings were released. HSP Direct, it turns out, has employed Mooney for “business development/consulting,” according to ethics forms filed by Mooney with the House Clerk.

The Super PAC helped Mooney best a crowded field of Republican candidates by spending $80,000 on direct mail pieces touting Mooney, according to the Center for Public Integrity. The website for the Super PAC is only a single page and lists only a P.O. Box.

Kathy Kiely, the managing editor of the Sunlight Foundation, told Republic Report that is a “classic example of what’s wrong with the current system.”