And so is Hillary Clinton.
As Wisconsin Watchdog reports, Senator Russ Feingold just joined his party’s toxic standard-bearer in having his very own State Department scandal.
Despite claiming last week that his decision to run again came after his tenure at the State Department in March 2015, the report reminds Wisconsinites that Senator Feingold previously told Politico and WORT-FM that he wanted to return to Washington in the summer of 2014.
Senator Feingold didn’t just force taxpayers to pay his salary – he also forced us to bankroll his political ambition. The career politician’s inability to help himself by laying the groundwork for another Senate run on the taxpayers’ dime means that he might have violated the Hatch Act:
Among its many prohibitions, the action does not allow preliminary candidacy activity like “meeting with individuals to plan the logistics and strategy of a campaign”…“Because the Hatch Act has been interpreted to prohibit preliminary activities regarding candidacy, any action that can reasonably be construed as evidence that an individual is seeking support for or undertaking an initial ‘campaign’ to secure a nomination or election to office would be viewed as candidacy for purposes of the Hatch Act,” the U.S. Office of Special Counsel wrote in a legal opinion…The Hatch Act’s prohibition against candidacy “extends not merely to the formal announcement of candidacy but also to the preliminaries leading to such announcement and to canvassing or soliciting support or doing or permitting to be done any act in furtherance of candidacy,” a 2007 letter from OSC states.
Senator Feingold also joins Clinton in having his very own corrupt organization.
Progressives United PAC has been exposed as a slush fund, national fundraising Rolodex, and campaign-in-waiting apparatus for his current Senate bid. Eight former staffers now work in key positions for Feingold’s campaign.
Switch the words ‘foundation’ to ‘PAC,’ ‘president’ to ‘senator’ and Feingold’s words last week about the Clinton Foundation could just as easily be applied to his Progressives United PAC:
“If it (the foundation) would in any way harm the credibility of the Clinton administration, I don’t think it’s worth having it, because the credibility and accountability of the president has to be first,” Feingold said at a campaign stop at Bushel & Peck’s Local Market in Beloit on Wednesday. “So from my point of view, they (the Clintons) should be very, very open. If it turns out it’s problematic, it probably should be shut down,” Feingold said.
Was Russ Feingold laying groundwork for Senate run while at State Department?
Wisconsin Watchdog
By M.D. Kittle
August 26, 2016
Russ Feingold appears to be changing his story about exactly when he decided to run for U.S. Senate.
But does the Middleton Democrat’s narrative tweak speak to bigger problems he may be facing with the federal Hatch Act?
In a radio interview this week with WADR FM, a community radio station in Janesville, Feingold said he waited until he left the State Department in March 2015 to decide whether to make another Senate run.
He told Politico a different story a year ago.
“Even though Feingold told his wife over a fish sandwich lunch last summer (2014) in Tomahawk, Wis., that he wanted to run again, he cautioned that the personal decision was only ‘1 percent of the equation’ — the rest being whether voters and party officials wanted him to run,” reporter Manu Raju in an Aug. 4, 2015 piece headlined, “Inside Russ Feingold’s Comeback Attempt.”
In July 2015, Feingold told liberal Madison station WORT 89.9 FM that he decided in July 2014 that he wanted to take back the seat he lost to Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, in 2010.
“I decided that I would never run again unless I really wanted to, if I really felt like it, and about last year this time, I realized that time had come,” Feingold said. “I was starting to feel very excited about serving the people of Wisconsin, but none of that is the important thing. The important thing is whether people wanted me to do it. It doesn’t matter if I want to do it, if people don’t want me to do it I shouldn’t come back. So I started finding out what the attitude was about and I found that people were really in need of things to be turned around in Wisconsin.”
The liberal’s great epiphany to run again, according to what he previously said, came while he was employed in the executive branch of government.
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Feingold had multiple conversations with senior Democratic leaders about the potential of a re-election bid during his tenure at the State Department. Those conversations, depending on when they occurred, could land the candidate in trouble with the Hatch Act, the nearly 80-year-old federal law that outlines what executive branch employees can and cannot do related to
political activity.
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Beyond hinting to fellow Dems in 2013 that he might run again in 2016, we know that a top party official spoke with Feingold in January 2015 – before the former senator left the State Department – about Feingold running for his old seat.
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, “said he talked to former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) in early January about a potential rematch against Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis). Feingold has been seriously considering a run and Tester said he learned his lesson from what many Democrats viewed as a lackluster 2010 campaign,” stated a Feb. 5, 2015 story in The Hill.
Prior to leaving the State Department, Feingold met with some old Dem Party friends to discuss his political future.
“Russ Feingold has been reaching out to supporters in recent weeks to discuss a 2016 Senate bid to retake his old seat from Republican Ron Johnson,” stated a Feb. 26, 2015 story in the Huffington Post. “Multiple sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity told HuffPost that in recent months, Feingold has talked to Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) and Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), among others.”
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The Hatch Act’s prohibition against candidacy “extends not merely to the formal announcement of candidacy but also to the preliminaries leading to such announcement and to canvassing or soliciting support or doing or permitting to be done any act in furtherance of candidacy,” a 2007 letter from OSC states.
And then there’s the matter Feingold’s Progressives United Inc., the liberal activist organization he founded in 2011. The political action committee arm of PU, as has been widely reported, gave just 5 percent of the money it raised to progressive candidates and political parties. PU spent much of the $7.1 million it took in on itself, including hefty salaries and consulting fees for its founder and key members of PU’s staff, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets.org.
As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported earlier this year, Feingold’s campaign paid $1.9 million for the services of the same direct mail, telemarketing and online firms employed by Progressives United Inc. and the PU PAC. During its run, the two entities paid the three firms $6.3 million.
And Feingold’s campaign bought the PU PAC mailing list and the campaign has to date raised about $290,000 from people who donated to the PAC in 2014, the Journal Sentinel reported.
Progressives United looks even more like the pretext to a political campaign when you consider that eight former PU staff members now work for Feingold’s political operation, most of those in key positions.
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The potential political dangers of intertwining staff members of nonprofit political activist organizations and campaigns have dogged Hillary Clinton’s run for president.
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