FEC after current Daschle campaign

SDP is reporting on money problems regarding the current Daschle campaign, Excerpt from Roll Call:

The Federal Election Commission sent a letter last month warning former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) of a potential violation of campaign finance law.

The missive, dated June 14, informed Daschle that during the first three months of 2005 he spent in excess of $5,000 from his principal campaign committee ("A Lot of People Supporting Tom Daschle") and must either file a statement of candidacy for 2010 or "disavow these activities."

In a February 7, 2005 Roll Call report, the large amount left over after the November elections was reported:

In addition to keeping the PAC open, Daschle is also sitting on more than $880,000 in leftover campaign funds from his re-election committee. That money cannot be transferred into DASHPAC, but the former Senator could use it to give large, unlimited donations to federal, state and local party committees.

It cannot be used for personal expenditures, under election laws, and he can also give some of the money to charity.

Daschle advisers said the leftover money is the result of a flood of cash that came in during the final weeks of the campaign, when Democrats across the country finally realized how close Daschle was to losing to Thune.

Note that the money cannot be transferred onto DASHPAC. But note how they may be getting around that:

Hildebrand said he does not get any direction from Daschle in making those statements. He does, however, get money each month from both the 2004 campaign fund and Daschle's political action commission — DASHPAC.

HildebrandTewes Consulting — the "Tewes" is Paul Tewes, Hildebrand's partner — receives $2,000 a month from Daschle's campaign fund and another $4,000 a month from DASHPAC. Hildebrand, who manages both funds for Daschle, said the payments his firm receives were to maintain and manage the political action committee and to wrap things up from the campaign.

So Hildebrand is receiving money from both DASHPAC and Daschle’s campaign fund. Looks like Hildebrand’s consulting operation makes a nice conduit from the restricted purposes of the Daschle campaign fund to work on other purposes, such as the less restrictive ones of DASHPAC. DASHPAC ended 2004 with $137,000.