FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION

Washington, DC 20463

MEMORANDUM

TO:

FROM:

DATE:

SUBJECT: 

The Commission 

Office of the Commission Secretary VFV

July 6, 2023

AOR 2023-05 (Alamo PAC) Comment

Attached is AOR 2023-05 (Alamo PAC) Comment. 

Attachment
 July 5, 2023 

Lisa J. Stevenson, Esq. 

Acting General Counsel 

Federal Election Commission 

1050 First St. NE 

Washington, DC 20463 

ao@fec.gov 

Re: Advisory Opinion Request 2023-05 (Alamo PAC) 

Dear Ms. Stevenson: 

Campaign Legal Center (“CLC”) respectfully submits this comment on Advisory 

Opinion Request 2023-05 (the “Request”), in which a leadership PAC proposes to 

create a separate, additional “non-contribution” account with its own contribution 

limit.1 We respectfully urge the Commission to deny this Request. 

The requestor is a leadership PAC — “a political committee that is directly or 

indirectly established, financed, maintained, or controlled by” a federal candidate or 

officeholder, “but which is not an authorized committee of the candidate” or 

officeholder.2 The requestor proposes to create a second account “that would be 

subject to a separate contribution limit and used exclusively for financing 

independent expenditures.”3 The Request asserts that this second account would 

only solicit or accept “funds in amounts and from sources that comply with” the 

Federal Election Campaign Act (the “Act”), and that any expenditures made from 

the second account “would not constitute coordinated communications” under 

Commission regulations.4

Approving the Request would effectively establish a mechanism for federal 

candidates and officeholders to use their leadership PACs to circumvent the Act’s 

contribution limits — which for PACs is currently $5,000 per year — and the 

1 Advisory Op. Request 2023-05 (June 26, 2023), https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/aos/2023-

05/202305R_1.pdf. 

2 52 U.S.C. § 30104(i)(8)(B). 

3 Request at 1. 

4 Id. at 2. 
2

Request identifies no judicial or Commission precedent that supports its proposal. 

Instead, the Request primarily asserts that its proposal is not foreclosed by Carey v. 

FEC or Advisory Opinion 2011-21, extrapolating from these two precedents that a 

nonconnected PAC should be permitted to create an additional “non-contribution” 

account.5 But the Request misreads these precedents to reach an erroneous 

conclusion. 

Carey involved a nonconnected PAC creating a separate account to be used 

exclusively for independent expenditures, which would accept unlimited 

contributions and contributions from corporations and labor unions.6 But the 

nonconnected PAC in Carey was not a leadership PAC or any other entity 

established, financed, maintained, or controlled by a federal candidate or 

officeholder — a crucial difference. Carey therefore did not raise or address the 

question of whether a leadership PAC, as an entity sponsored by a federal candidate, 

could raise additional money through a separate additional account, as the Request 

proposes. Indeed, the decision expressly reaffirmed the government’s anticorruption 

interest in regulating, through the Act’s contribution limits, money provided to 

candidates’ authorized committees and PACs.7 Carey thus provides no support for 

the Request. 

Advisory Opinion 2011-21 is similarly unhelpful to the Request. In that opinion, the 

Commission rejected a leadership PAC’s proposal to create an additional, “noncontribution” account. The requestor had proposed to solicit and accept unlimited 

contributions, as well as contributions from corporate and labor unions, and, like 

here, represented that the account would be used exclusively to make independent 

expenditures. The Commission reasoned that the proposal would violate the Act’s 

soft money prohibition, which bars federal candidates, their agents, and any entities 

that they establish, finance, maintain, or control — a category that clearly includes 

5 See Carey v. FEC, 791 F. Supp. 2d 121, 125 (D.D.C. 2011); Advisory Op. 2011-21 

(Constitutional Conservatives Fund PAC). 

6 Carey and the Commission’s consent agreement pursuant to that decision effectively 

approved the creation of so-called “hybrid” PACs, which are not connected to or EFMC’d by 

any federal candidate or officeholder, and can therefore maintain an additional, separate 

“non-contribution” account, which can accept unlimited contributions, and may only be used 

to finance independent expenditures. 

7 Carey, 791 F. Supp. 2d at 125–126 (“If contributions are directed toward a federal 

candidate’s personal coffers or his or her own political action committee, such contributions 

are subject to statutory limits because of the “strong governmental interest in combating 

corruption and the appearance thereof. . . . If, however, a non-connected political action 

committee is making independent expenditures, wholly separate from federal candidates or 

parties . . . there is not that same governmental interest in protecting quid pro quo

corruption.”) (emphasis added). The Request asserts that this language in Carey does not 

foreclose its proposal: “[W]hen a PAC’s non-contribution account would only accept funds 

subject to the Act’s contribution limits and source prohibitions . . . the PAC need not be 

“wholly separate” from a candidate because the [hard money] requirements in 

§ 30125(e)(1)(A) are being met.” Request at 6. However, this argument fails to explain why a 

leadership PAC — which, unlike a super PAC or the non-contribution account of a hybrid 

PAC, is subject to the Act’s contribution limits — should be allowed to raise money, beyond 

those limits, to finance independent expenditures. 
3

leadership PACs — from raising or spending money that does not comport with the 

Act’s requirements. But soft money is not the only legal barrier at issue: while the 

Request asserts that its second account would only solicit or accept money that 

complies with the Act’s requirements, the Request raises a different concern that the 

Commission did not need to address in Advisory Opinion 2011-21: the circumvention 

of the Act’s contribution limits. 

Under the Act’s contribution limits, a leadership PAC can solicit or accept up to 

$5,000 per year from any contributor. While a federal candidate or officeholder can, 

in theory, establish and sponsor multiple leadership PACs, these committees would 

be “affiliated” and would therefore share a contribution limit,8 thus preventing any 

candidate or officeholder from circumventing the Act’s limits by simply creating 

multiple committees.9 The Request proposes circumventing the $5,000-per-year 

contribution limit in a different way, by creating a second account — rather than a 

second committee — with a separate limit. This is a distinction without a difference 

and it would, thus, violate the basic anticircumvention principle of affiliated 

committees, i.e., that multiple committees organized or sponsored by the same 

person are subject to a single contribution limit. The Request would therefore 

undermine the Act’s contribution limits in much the same way as creating multiple 

separate PACs would, absent the Commission’s affiliation rules. Accordingly, the 

Request’s basic premise that its proposed “non-contribution” account would comply 

with the Act is inherently flawed, as this account would effectively violate the Act’s 

anticircumvention provision and thus violate its contribution limits.10

Perhaps anticipating this concern, the Request suggests that “the concept” of 

allowing political committees to maintain multiple accounts with separate 

contribution limits is “not a foreign one in campaign finance law.”11 The examples 

and precedents that it relies on for this point, however, are inapposite. 

For starters, the Request contends that leadership PACs are “a species of 

nonconnected PAC” and should therefore “be able to establish a non-contribution 

8 See 52 U.S.C. § 30116(a)(5); 11 C.F.R. § 100.5(g)(2) (All committees . . . established, 

financed, maintained or controlled by the same corporation, labor organization, person, or 

group of persons . . . are affiliated.”); 11 C.F.R. § 110.3(a)(1) (“For the purposes of the 

contribution limitations of [11 C.F.R. §§ 110.1 and 110.2], all contributions made or received 

by more than one affiliated committee . . . shall be considered to be made or received by a 

single political committee.”). 

9 See also Leadership PACs, 68 Fed. Reg. 67,013, 67,017 (“Although such leadership PACs 

are not exposed to the consequences of affiliation with authorized committees, leadership 

PACs may still be deemed affiliated with other unauthorized committees.”). 

10 See Advisory Op. 2022-06 at 5-6 (Hispanic Leadership Trust) (noting that the 

Commission’s affiliation regulations “are designed to give effect to the Act’s anti-proliferation 

provision” such that generally, “[c]ommittees EFMC’d by the same actor (i.e., affiliated 

committees) are subject to a single contribution limit”); see, e.g., Advisory Op. 2011-21 at 1-2 

(Constitutional Conservatives Fund PAC) (noting that the requestor, a leadership PAC, “is 

affiliated with Lead Encourage Elect PAC (a/k/a “LEE PAC”), another leadership PAC 

sponsored by Senator Lee”). 

11 Request at 4. 
4

account,”12 but this contention elides the crucial difference, noted above, that a 

leadership PAC is established, financed, maintained, or controlled by a federal 

candidate. The Request further contends that federal candidates have a recognized 

“right . . . to engage in independent expenditure activity,”13 and that leadership 

PACs “have their own particular objectives and agendas, which they may 

legitimately advance through independent expenditure activity,”14 but fails to 

explain why the right or ability to make independent expenditures supports being 

allowed to separately fundraise, through an additional account with its own 

contribution limit, to finance those independent expenditures. The fact that federal 

candidates and leadership PACs can make independent expenditures in no way 

supports the conclusion that they must be allowed to raise additional money to do so, 

beyond the relevant contribution limits the Act prescribes. 

The Request also points out that federal candidates’ authorized committees and 

national party committees are permitted to establish recount fund accounts that 

have a separate contribution limit, suggesting that its proposal is on similar 

footing.15 It is not. The Commission concluded long ago that recount accounts are 

allowed to have a separate contribution limit because donations to these accounts 

are not “contributions” under the Act,16 a rationale that simply does not apply in the 

context of leadership PACs making independent expenditures. In marked contrast to 

recount funds, the separate, additional account that the Request proposes to create 

would clearly be soliciting and accepting “contributions” — “money or anything of 

value” provided “for the purpose of influencing” federal elections17 — under the Act. 

The Commission’s prior approval of recount accounts thus provides no support for 

the Request’s proposed circumvention of contribution limits. 

Backstopping its arguments based on precedent, the Request also asserts that its 

proposal to create a separate account with its own contribution limit “does not raise 

corruption concerns for either the candidates receiving contributions” or the 

leadership PAC’s sponsor.18 But these arguments do not address the corruption 

concern presented by allowing leadership PACs to circumvent contribution limits, 

12 Id. at 3. 

13 Id. at 4. 

14 Id.

15 Id.

16 See Advisory Op. 2006-24 at 6 (NRSC) (“[A] Federal candidate’s recount fund must not 

receive or solicit donations in excess of the Act’s amount limitations. . . . Thus, by operation 

of [52 U.S.C. § 30125(e)], any recount fund established by a Federal candidate may not 

receive donations that in the aggregate exceed [the Act’s prevailing candidate contribution 

limits]. However, because section [30125(e)(1)(A)] does not convert the donations into 

“contributions” for purposes of [the Act], donations to a Federal candidate’s recount fund will 

not be aggregated with contributions from those persons to the Federal candidate for the 

general election.”) (emphasis added); see also Advisory Op. 1978-92 at 2 (Miller for Senate) 

(“[G]ifts, or loans or payments of money or anything of value that are made solely for the 

purpose of defraying the expenses of a Federal election recount are not contributions or 

expenditures under the Act and Commission regulations.”). 

17 52 U.S.C. § 30101(8)(A). 

18 Request at 6. 
5

thus allowing contributors to a leadership PAC to give twice the amount they are 

currently allowed to give. Indeed, Carey provided a clear reminder that when 

“contributions are directed toward a federal candidate’s personal coffers or his or her 

own political action committee,” the Act’s contribution limits apply because the 

government has a “strong governmental interest in combating corruption and the 

appearance thereof.”19

Nor does the Request’s alternative proposal — to establish an additional, separate 

account for independent expenditure that is “administered and overseen by a special 

committee whose members are appointed without any involvement of, and whose 

decision-making is not reviewed or approved by” the leadership PAC’s sponsor20 — 

resolve the circumvention problem. Regardless of how the additional account is 

administered, approving the Request would allow the leadership PAC to circumvent 

the Act’s contribution limits and thus raise twice the funds it can currently raise, 

undermining the anticorruption interest that those limits advance. 

Beyond these fundamental legal problems, granting this Request would be very bad 

policy. Leadership PACs are notorious for being abused as vehicles for federal 

candidates’ and officeholders’ personal enrichment. Indeed, such abuse is welldocumented. A 2021 report authored by CLC and Issue One found that 92% of 

members of Congress have a leadership PAC, and documented numerous examples 

of leadership PACs being used as slush funds for candidates to pay for personal 

expenses.21 A 2018 report contained similar findings.22 The Commission originally 

permitted the creation of leadership PAC for the purpose of making contributions to 

other federal candidates;23 however, they increasingly have been (and continue to be) 

misused to pay for, e.g., family vacations, personal legal expenses, golf trips, tickets 

to sporting events and Broadway shows, and luxury meals and hotel stays.24

The abuse of leadership PACs is no accident; the Commission has long failed to rein 

in this practice by maintaining the flawed and problematic position that the Act’s 

personal use prohibition — which forbids the use of any “contribution accepted by a 

candidate” to defray expenses that would exist irrespective of a candidate’s 

19 Carey, 791 F. Supp. 2d at 125 (emphasis added). 

20 Request at 6. 

21 See CLC and Issue One, All Expenses Paid: Another Look at Congressional Leadership 

PACs’ Outlandish Spending (Oct. 1, 2021), https://campaignlegal.org/sites/default/files/2021-

10/All%20Expenses%20Paid%20-%20Another%20Look%2010-01-21.pdf. 

22 See CLC and Issue One, All Expenses Paid: How Leadership PACs Became Politicians’ 

Preferred Ticket to Luxury Living (July 19, 2018), https://campaignlegal.org/sites/default/files 

/2018-07/All%20Expenses%20Paid%20-%20How%20Leadership%20PACs%20Became%20 

Politicians%27%20Preferred%20Ticket%20to%20Luxury%20Living_0.pdf (“2018 CLC and 

Issue One Report”). 

23 See Advisory Op. 1978-12 (Waxman). 

24 See 2018 CLC and Issue One Report; see, e.g., John Bresnahan, Watchdog: Duncan may 

have used $100k in donations on family, Politico (Apr. 4, 2018), https://www.politico.com/ 

story/2018/04/04/jimmy-duncan-ethics-campaign-donations-502112; Chris Marquette, Vail: 

Where leadership PAC money goes to play, Roll Call (Mar. 12, 2020), https://rollcall.com/2020 

/03/12/vail-where-leadership-pac-money-goes-to-play/. 
6

campaign or official duties25 — does not apply to leadership PACs, despite the fact 

that these PACs are, by definition, established, financed, maintained, or controlled 

by a federal candidate or officeholder.26 Consequently, federal candidates openly 

abuse leadership PACs for personal gain, a fact most likely known to sophisticated 

leadership PAC donors seeking to curry favor with candidates and officeholders. 

Against this unfortunate backdrop, it is deeply troubling that the Request effectively 

proposes allowing these vehicles for personal enrichment to raise twice the money 

they can currently raise. Permitting leadership PAC donors to give double the funds 

they can currently give would serve to further heighten the potential for corruption 

and the appearance thereof. 

In sum, the Request lacks support in any FEC or judicial precedent; on the contrary, 

it seeks to circumvent the Act’s contribution limits on the amount a leadership PAC 

can raise. It is also bad policy. Accordingly, we respectfully urge the Commission to 

deny the Request. 

 

Respectfully submitted, 

 /s/ Saurav Ghosh 

Erin Chlopak 

Saurav Ghosh 

Campaign Legal Center 

1101 14th St. NW, Suite 400 

Washington, DC 20005 

25 52 U.S.C. § 30114(a), (b); 11 C.F.R. § 113.1(g). 

26 In 2018, CLC and Issue One, along with three Republican and two Democratic former 

members of Congress, filed a rulemaking petition asking the Commission to revise and 

amend its regulations to explicitly clarify that the personal use rules apply to leadership 

PACs. Petition for Rulemaking to Revise and Amend Regulations Relating to the Personal Use 

of Leadership PAC Funds (July 24, 2018), https://campaignlegal.org/sites/default/files/2018-

07/07-24-18%20CLC-IO%20Leadership%20PAC%20Personal%20Use%20petition.pdf. Not 

only is that rulemaking languishing, but the Commission’s analysis in MUR 7961 rested on 

the opposite conclusion: that the personal use rules do not apply to leadership PACs because 

they are not authorized candidate committees. See Factual and Legal Analysis at 9, MUR 

7961 (LOU PAC, et al.), https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/murs/7961/7961_15.pdf; Statement of 

Reasons of Chairman Allen Dickerson and Comm’rs Sean J. Cooksey and James E. “Trey” 

Trainor III at 2, MUR 7657 (IRL PAC, et al.), https://www.fec.gov/files/legal/murs/7657/7657_ 

16.pdf; see also Shanna Ports, FEC Waves the White Flag on Yet Another Issue: Leadership 

PAC Abuse (Mar. 9, 2023), https://campaignlegal.org/update/fec-waves-white-flag-yetanother-issue-leadership-pac-abuse.