The Family Leader Foundation’s Campaign Intervention Business

I stay out of politics, believe it or not.  By that I mean I am not really interested in the lobbying and campaign intervention prohibitions vis-à-vis tax exemption.  I just don’t see what political activity has to do with any fundamental or normative justification for charity and tax exemption.  Regulate campaign finance all you want, I’m no First Amendment scholar.  But why are the rules in the tax code?  I think the 501(c)(3) rules are unconstitutional, and if not that, hopelessly unenforceable. 

A Reuters story last weekend provides a great example.  Here is the short version: The Family Leader Foundation, a conservative Christian 501(c)(3) organization, is headed by Bob Vander Plaats, a well dressed charismatic kingmaker.  Based on recent history, you win Iowa if you get his endorsement.  His personal endorsement, of course, because the Foundation is prohibited from endorsing candidates.  Still, the Foundation sponsors all sorts of voter education events at which candidates can spend lots of money buying advertisements and reserving seats, that sort of stuff.  The campaign that doesn’t patronize Foundation events or allows other candidates to be bigger patrons can probably forget about Bob’s endorsement.  His personal endorsement, mind you.  VP Pence refused to patronize Foundation events, so he can forget about Iowa.  You see where this is going, don’t you?  From Reuters:

Trailing far behind former President Donald Trump in national polls and beset by turmoil in his campaign, DeSantis and his advisers are spending heavily in Iowa in hopes of stalling Trump’s momentum by beating him in the state’s caucuses on Jan. 15, where Republicans begin to choose their next presidential nominee. The state’s influential evangelical voting base is crucial to that strategy.

The DeSantis campaign, a super PAC linked to him and a nonprofit group supporting him together paid $95,000 in recent months to the Family Leader Foundation, an Iowa-based nonprofit led by evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, according to campaign finance reports and a document prepared by an Iowa state lawmaker who was helping the Vander Plaats organization raise money for a July 14 presidential candidate forum.  

For that money, DeSantis and supporting groups got three pages of advertisements in a booklet distributed at the July forum attended by 2,000 Christian conservatives, and tickets to the summit, lunch and an after-dinner event.  But the real value may be more in building a relationship with Vander Plaats, whose endorsement is coveted in the early-voting state, said three campaign finance experts and an academic who studies Iowa campaign spending.

Naturally everybody is denying everything.  But a couple of Iowa political scientists are quoted in the article pointing out the obvious.  DeSatan paid so much for an advertisement that he either overpaid or is paying for something else.  Like an endorsement from the kingmaker.  So DeSatan is throwing a hail Mary and I have never been a stronger Trump supporter than I am right now.  If he gets the endorsement — the personal endorsement — it will be carefully worded to make clear that the endorsement is just that. You heard it here first.  

All perfectly consistent with tax exemption, though, even if the personal endorsement implies the Foundation’s endorsement as well.  Nothing can be done about it because we recognize corporations as people separate from their owners or, in this case, fiduciaries.  I don’t have a problem with that, its good for business risk taking and all that.  It creates jobs.  But we live with our rules and this proves that the lobbying and campaign intervention rules are a big waste of time.

darryll k. jones