Friday, March 28

Congressman's daughter paid $270,000 fundraising commission

Conservative bloggers, like the two numbskulls who run Majority Accountability Project, have been all over the story of how a Democratic Congressman's daughter was paid seemingly large sums of money to fundraise on his behalf.

From Newsday.com:

Molly Bishop has made nearly $270,000 since 2002 fundraising for her father, Rep. Timothy Bishop, and has broadened her clientele since 2006 and earned $164,000 working for other local Democrats, according to state and federal records.

Bishop, 29, who started working as a part-time fundraiser in her father's first campaign in 2002, billed Brookhaven Supervisor Brian Foley's campaign $118,000 and the Brookhaven Democratic Party $35,000 and has worked for a half dozen other local candidates, according to reports filed with the State Board of Elections and the Federal Election Commission.
Other bloggers have long chronicled the potential ethical problems of hiring family members as lobbyists, but the subject of whether family members should be paid to fundraise for candidates is only now gaining traction.

Last year, Mitt Romney's campaign got attention from this blog (and others) when they paid students who raised at least $1,000 for the former presidential candidate a 10% commission on all money raised.

I think it's great that people want to look more closely at politicians who pay relatives a commission to fundraise on their behalf.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Assuming there's no tax money involved, there should not be a problem with this. Lots of people hire their relatives.