RUNNING FOR OFFICE (IN 4 STATES). Roll Call. “There have been a fair share of congressional carpetbaggers in history, but Allan Levene may be the first to assemble an entire set of matched luggage. And he’s using it to run this year for no fewer than four open House seats in four different states.”
SUPER PAC DONATIONS. USAT. “Labor unions and deep-pocketed donors promoting liberal causes are flexing their political muscle and have overtaken conservative billionaires in the race to fund super PACs, a USA TODAY analysis of new campaign-finance reports shows.”
COMMENTS ON IRS PROPOSALS. Philly.com. “As a pair of Republican-controlled House panels hold hearings this week on the Internal Revenue Service, including the agency’s efforts to regulate political spending by non-profit groups, newly available documents show a broad range of right-leaning organizations weighing in to oppose the agency’s proposed rules.”
LITTLE SHOPS OF DOLLARS. Roll Call. “Some of the shops’ owners credit their size (each employs fewer than 10 registered lobbyists) as an advantage over the biggest firms with their often similarly big overhead.”
RETIREES’ ACCOUNTS. Roll Call. “Seventeen members of the House of Representatives, who have announced their retirement at the end of this Congress, are holding a total of over $10 million in campaign and leadership PAC accounts as of the end of the year.”
IRS CHIEF TESTIFIES. The Hill. “The new IRS commissioner, under intense questioning from GOP lawmakers, vowed Wednesday to quickly get congressional investigators the documents they need to finish off their inquiry into the agency’s treatment of Tea Party groups.”
CFR AND CAMPAIGNS. Times Union. “In a new web ad, the National Republican Campaign Committee is attacking Democratic NY-19 challenger Sean Eldridge as a hypocrite for pouring more than $700,000 of his own money so far into his campaign to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Chris Gibson.”
KOCH REMAINS OF THE DAY. Mother Jones. “But last week, following the Kochs’ first donor gathering of 2014, one attendee left behind a sensitive document at the Renaissance Esmeralda resort outside of Palm Springs, California, where the Kochs and their comrades had spent three days focused on winning the 2014 midterm elections and more.”
INDEPENDENT MONEY ONLINE? Epolitics.com. “My suspicion is that many of these groups will be run by The Usual Suspects, i.e., consultants who’ve been kicking around politics for a while and are used to doing things the old-fashioned media-buyer way. In that case, they’re likely throw money at poorly targeted TV campaigns rather than spend time and resources building up a robust field operation or investing in data-modeling and voter targeting.”
CA: BAIL QUESTIONS. KPBS. “The three men accused of illegally steering foreign money into San Diego elections were charged with the same crime. But their terms of release are very different.”
NM: LOBBYING RULES CHANGE. WP. “Legislators in New Mexico who leave office would be required to wait two years before lobbying their former colleagues under a proposed measure that advanced through a key state House committee on Tuesday.”
OH: ACCUSATIONS AND PAY TO PLAY. Columbus Dispatch. “Pepper, a former Hamilton County commissioner, accused DeWine of engineering a massive and possibly illegal pay-to-play operation in which law firms that gave political contributions received lucrative state contracts.”
HAVE A GREAT DAY.