Date: 05-29-2016
Hal Rogers has been in office for 18 terms of living ‘high off the hog’
Over the last year, U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, spent nearly $32,000 on tickets to the Kentucky Derby and Breeders’ Cup, plus $300 to hire handicapper Ellis Starr to provide betting tips for his racetrack guests. “Nobody was even talking politics. It was just entertainment for everyone,” Starr recently recalled.
U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Somerset, paid $21,504 to golf at Pebble Beach Resorts on California’s beautiful Monterey Peninsula. Down the coastline, retiring U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, dropped more than $20,000 for a weekend of dining and poolside socializing in Beverly Hills.
These members of Kentucky’s congressional delegation didn’t take this money from their campaign committees, which hold the funds they raised to keep their current jobs. Instead, they tapped their leadership PACs — their lightly regulated, seldom scrutinized political action committees, which are mostly funded by interest groups who lobby Congress for favorable legislation.
Leadership PAC money can be spent however lawmakers want, as long as it doesn’t pay for their own campaigns. They donate some to the campaigns of other politicians, earning them the goodwill necessary to rise in the congressional ranks. Some covers the PACs’ record-keeping expenses. And — as is the case with Kentucky’s delegation — some goes to upscale dining, out-of-state trips, clothing, cigars, alcohol, entertainment and payments to lawmakers’ families and staff for services defined as “consulting” or “planning.”
“Leadership PACs are little more than slush funds, really. It’s pretty much ‘Anything goes,’” said Viveca Novak of the Center for Responsive Politics, which studies the influence of money on politics. “The only one who could impose legal restrictions on this practice would be Congress. And given who the system personally benefits, it’s not likely you’re going to see Congress do that.”
Most members of Congress are paid $174,000 a year. That’s more than four times Kentucky’s per-capita income, but it’s modest compared to the salaries of the industry lobbyists and corporate titans with whom they socialize at Washington fundraisers.
Leadership PACs allow congressmen to keep pace. They let Hal Rogers, for instance, hand somebody else the bill for $5,913 at Casa Luca, a popular Italian restaurant near the White House — as Rogers did April 4 — or a total of $5,915 over 17 meals at the private Capitol Hill Club, where Rogers likes to have lunch a short stroll from his House office.
Raising money to raise more money
As of April 30, Rogers’ Help America’s Leaders PAC had raised $455,427 for the 2015-16 election cycle.
Its top donors (at $20,500) were the executives at Rajant Corp., a Pennsylvania broadband provider that last year won $300,000 in state tax incentives to open a facility in Morehead through the Shaping Our Appalachian Region initiative that Rogers helped establish. Its next-largest donor (at $15,000) is New York real estate investor Jed Manocherian, who lobbies Congress to spend more on scientific research. Rogers helps decide federal spending as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
In a statement, Rogers spokeswoman Megan Bell said the 18-term congressman is not influenced by donors. The financial assistance Rajant Corp. received through the SOAR initiative is unrelated to contributions its executives made to HALPAC or, separately, to Rogers’ re-election campaign, which they gave $6,000 at around the same time, Bell said. A call to Rajant Corp. about HALPAC was not returned.
“The congressman, as you know, has fought tirelessly to bring new industries and related jobs to Southern and Eastern Kentucky throughout his career,” Bell said. “His interest in and support for companies that are seeking to locate facilities in Kentucky are in no way related to or dictated by the political leanings of their key staff.”
Travel and meals billed to HALPAC — such as the Pebble Beach golf trip — are necessary operating expenses for fund-raising events where Rogers meets with his PAC’s donors, Bell said.
$40,168 is what U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers’ leadership PAC paid in April to the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla.
In fact, two-thirds of the $395,388 HALPAC has spent this election cycle went to operating expenses. Just 29 percent went to campaign donations from Rogers to his fellow Republicans, according to Federal Election Commission data.
In other words, most of the money HALPAC has raised is paying for HALPAC to raise more money — whether it’s at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla., ($40,168 in April) or the Sun Valley Golf Course in Ketchum, Idaho, ($3,065 last September) or Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab in Washington ($695 over three visits).
“The expenses you noted were incurred in conjunction with official HALPAC fund-raising events,” Bell said. “It is typical for members (of Congress) to host events, including those which require travel, to solicit donations for their PACs. The events are generally attended by a dozen or more individuals.”
Other HALPAC purchases include cigars ($1,297); a limo service ($1,120); payments to Rogers’ wife, Cynthia, for “event planning” ($2,000); and tens of thousands of dollars more for meals, lodging and airfare around the country. HALPAC also paid $27,225 for “political consulting” to Will Smith, who already gets a $172,500 public salary as Rogers’ staff director at the House Appropriations Committee.
Smith did not return a call seeking comment. Bell said Smith “has been a trusted adviser to Congressman Rogers for two decades” and “performs a number of duties to assist the congressman in successfully administering his leadership PAC,” such as analyzing key congressional and state races to decide where to send campaign donations. Rogers’ wife is paid because she “performs several administrative functions for HALPAC,” Bell said. (READ MORE)
By John Cheves
Lexington Herald-Leader
