[B]ernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, has said super PACs and the unlimited amounts of money they can collect have put America on a path toward oligarchy.
“There is one issue that impacts every other issue,” Sanders told a crowd in Amherst, New Hampshire, on Labor Day. “It’s hard to say which issue is more important than the other, but the issue of campaign finance reform is huge.”
But while the presidential candidate pledged he would not have a super PAC in the 2016 election, a number of unauthorized committees have sprung up to support Sanders’ run.
The existence of outside spending groups has created a dissonance between Sanders’ rhetoric and the reality of unbridled spending by PACs that can spring up and raise cash quickly, even when a candidate asks them not to.
One of those PACs has violated federal law.
The Americans Socially United PAC website, run by a self-described lobbyist and diplomat named Cary Peterson, is active and seeking donations, and the founder claims that he has hundreds of workers organizing to elect Sanders each week.
But the PAC did not disclose donations and disbursements of funds to the Federal Election Commission.
Peterson said he regularly meets with financial heavyweights from New York and Washington D.C., who have “maxed out” donations to the Sanders campaign and just secured a donation from Daniel Craig, who plays James Bond.
The Center for Public Integrity reached Craig, who confirmed that he did support Sanders and had donated to Peterson’s PAC.
Peterson said the money he collects goes to efforts to get Sanders’ name on the ballot in key primary states like Texas and California. He also said he spent about $46,000 putting a Sanders billboard up in Times Square in April before the Senator’s official announcement.
The billboard was an attempt to push Sanders into the race, he says.
“We wanted him to put up or shut up,” he said.
Peterson also described a comprehensive ground organization his PAC was supporting in multiple states, and said around 450 people were receiving money for their work on a weekly basis.
But while Peterson is the treasurer of the organization and said he aimed to raise $52 million, he couldn’t offer details on how much the committee had collected so far.
“If I had a million dollars in the bank right now that means I’m not doing my job,” Peterson said. “The money goes in and goes out.”
The FEC requested spending information after Peterson failed to file a mid-year report of receipts and disbursements.
Larry Noble, former general counsel of the FEC who now works at the Campaign Legal Center, said without an FEC report it’s impossible to tell exactly what Peterson’s committee is actually doing.
“It also seems odd that someone running a PAC wouldn’t know how much cash was generally on hand,” Noble added.
He also said Peterson’s comments were strange, and “should be enough for the FEC to ask further questions.”
Peterson claims he has corresponded with Nick Carter, managing director of the campaign committee, and that “they like what we are doing.”
Peterson also said Sanders’ people told him “definitely don’t stop.”
Sanders declined to comment for the article, but Brad Deutsch, Sanders’ legal counsel, provided VTDigger with two letters sent to Peterson that seemed to communicate a message to the effect of “please do stop.”
The first was a cease and desist letter from early June asking Peterson to change the name of his PAC, then called “Bet on Bernie 2016.” The name violated federal law, which states that unauthorized committees cannot have a candidate’s name in their title.
Deutsch also wrote that Peterson’s committee was “intercepting donations which are likely intended for the official campaign.”
Peterson recently changed the name of his PAC to Americans Socially United after requests from Sanders and the FEC, but he is still in violation of federal law for not providing the government with fundraising reports.
Peterson said he didn’t submit the mid-year report due to technical issues, and he plans to submit the information soon.
“The disturbing part is he is not filing a report,” Noble said. “We don’t know how much money he has collected or spent.”
In a follow-up letter to Peterson on June 19, the campaign made it clear that it wanted to have no direct communication or meetings with Peterson or any other Super PAC representatives.
“In fact, campaign finance reform is at the forefront of Senator Sanders’ presidential campaign,” Deutsch wrote in the June 19 letter. “Moreover, it is illegal for any candidate to coordinate with a Super PAC.”
Four other unauthorized Bernie committees — Northern Michigan for Bernie Sanders, Upstate New York for Bernie Sanders, Billionaires for Bernie and Youth 4 Bernie — have also been issued warnings from the FEC because their committee names illegally include Sanders’ name.
Some of these PACs appear to be changing their names to comply with federal law, including the Billionaire PAC, which is now listed on the FEC site as “Billionaires for Bold Educated Resolute Noble Independent Enlightened Statesmanship.”
Sanders squelches local PAC
Phil Fiermonte, the field director for Sanders, effectively shut down the Collective Action PAC — a Montpelier-based fundraising organization — after communicating his displeasure to the committee’s founder, Rep. Chris Pearson, a Progressive from Chittenden County who formerly served as a press assistant for Sanders.
“I decided for a number of reasons to pull the plug, including that Bernie made it clear that he was not interested in having a PAC to help him out,” Pearson said.
Pearson started the PAC before Sanders formally entered the race, putting $3,050 of his own money into the committee in order to establish an online presence aimed at drafting Bernie into the race.
“I wanted to put a little money of my own into social media and start some discussion,” Pearson said.
The PAC spent $2,550 in January 2014 on Facebook ads supporting a Bernie run, according to filings from the Federal Election Commission. Other expenses included printing letterhead and envelopes, processing credit card payments and food for volunteers.
Pearson also paid himself a onetime $5,000 consulting fee in June for his work establishing the PAC, according to the FEC.
Because of how little the PAC collected, only one itemized contribution is listed on Pearson’s filings, a $2,000 donation from Harry Winters, a retired doctor from Louisiana.
Pearson’s PAC promoted an anti-PAC attitude, with his site calling the shadowy organizations “offensive” and asking donors to only contribute if they had already hit the maximum donation of $2,700 allowed for Sanders’ campaign fund.
Pearson said this dissonance made it hard to run the PAC, and that Sanders supporters were often reluctant to pledge money to an institutions Sanders has so forcefully criticized.
“Getting pledges was actually hard,” Pearson said. “Bernie’s supporters were pleased he was shooing away PACs and had rightly asked the question ‘should we be doing this?”
Pearson’s PAC is now dead, and the website was shut down in July.
