Can You Help Us Identify These Mystery PACs?

Politicians set up so-called leadership PACs to raise even more money. But they don't want you to know what they're doing.

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Politicians collect money for their own campaigns — we all know that. But many of them also raise a separate pot of money to help other politicians. Lacking a requirement that lawmakers disclose their affiliations with leadership PACs, these committees have been able to slip under the radar for years. With your help, we can identify which politicians are behind some of these mysterious PACs.

By making donations to members of their party, ambitious lawmakers can use their leadership PACs to gain clout among their colleagues and boost their bids for leadership posts or committee chairmanships. Politicians also use leadership PACs to lay the groundwork for their own campaigns for higher office. And some use their PACs to hire additional staff—sometimes even their family members—and to travel around the country or eat in some of Washington's finest restaurants. The limits on how a politician can spend leadership PAC money are not especially strict.

Leadership PACs have become commonplace in recent years, even among freshman members. These PACs are considered separate from a politician's campaign committee, providing donors with a way around limits on contributions to the politician's own campaign. Individuals can contribute up to $5,000 per year to a member's leadership PAC, even if they have already donated the maximum to that member's campaign committee. The potential money adds up—nearly $15,000 in two years, all from one person. Leadership PACs can contribute up to $5,000 per election to their sponsor's campaign committee, so there are both direct and indirect benefits to a politician who has a leadership PAC.

Below is a list of some PACs that we suspect are affiliated with politicians. You can look for information about these PACs in the news, on blogs or on the Web in general. If you suspect you know which lawmaker is affiliated with the PAC, you can call their congressional office and simply ask to confirm that the committee is the member's leadership PAC.

E-mail us whatever you discover at MysteryPACs@crp.org. Please include documentation of your findings, including links to Web pages and the names and contact information of anyone you spoke to during your investigation.

We had great success in tracking down leadership PACs over the years, but some remain a mystery—and we've added new ones. Keep looking!

Don't feel like playing detective? Help the Center's researchers tackle this and other important assignments by making a tax-deductible contribution today.

Happy hunting!

More:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/mysterypacs.php



Here are some of the unsolved "Mystery PACS"

Because I Care PAC
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00381624

Dam PAC
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00410993

Keystone Alliance
http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00432096