Is Mike Franken keeping his no-corporate-PAC pledge?

Democrat Mike Franken, who’s challenging Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley to represent Iowa in the Senate, is campaigning on a pledge of taking no corporate PAC money, saying he’ll stand up to “special interests” in Washington.

But Republicans have accused Franken of bending that pledge, saying money that originated in corporate PACs has found its way to his campaign coffers, even though he hasn’t taken that money directly.

Franken’s critics have pointed to donations he’s taken from leadership PACs, which are political action committees associated with current or former members of Congress that generally give to candidates in the same party.

A few of those groups have taken donations from corporate PACs, but there’s disagreement over the extent to which taking those donations is similar to taking corporate PAC money.

Republicans have latched onto those donations as evidence he has broken the spirit, if not the letter, of his no-corporate-PAC pledge.

“He’s skirted his own self-imposed pledge to not take 'one dime of corporate PAC money' by taking thousands from Democrat PACs that are funded by … you guessed it: corporate groups,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Kush Desai said in a news release last week.

C.J. Petersen, Franken’s campaign spokesperson, said Franken kept to his promise of refusing corporate PAC donations.

“As he has promised Iowans, Mike Franken has never taken a dime from corporate PACs, and after nearly four decades serving our country in the Navy, he won’t be beholden to anyone but Iowans,” Petersen said in an emailed statement.

He said Grassley’s campaign has taken nearly $1.4 million from the pharmaceutical industry “and voted to protect their profits by blocking capping insulin costs at $35 a month and writing the bill that banned Medicare from negotiating lower prices.“

What are PACs?

A PAC, which stands for political action committee, is a committee that is organized around raising money and spending it to influence elections. PACs can generally be separated into three categories: business, labor and ideological.

A corporate PAC is a committee that’s made up of contributions given by employees of a specific corporation. Corporations are not allowed to give money to candidates directly, and no corporate funds are used in the PAC. Corporate PACs are generally restricted to donating $5,000 to a candidate during an election cycle.

Not taking corporate PAC money became a popular plank of many Democratic congressional hopefuls in 2018 and 2020, and Franken is one of several candidates, both incumbents and challengers, who have taken that pledge this year.

Franken’s donors

The vast majority of Franken’s money has come from individual donations.

Federal Election Commission filings show out of $4.6 million raised, Franken has taken $46,000 from 12 PACs, including union PACs, ideological PACs and leadership PACs.

Of those leadership PACs, three of them have corporate PAC donations: Velvet Hammer, a committee affiliated with U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., gave $2,500; Defense Dem, a committee affiliated with U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., gave $1,000; and Common Ground, affiliated with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., gave $5,000.

Common Ground PAC, for example, has received around $450,000 of its $1.4 million raised from other PACs, according to FEC data. Not all are corporate PACs, but donors include PACs representing employees of Amazon, Eli Lily, Wells Fargo and dozens of other corporations.

All told, those three donations make up 0.16% of the money Franken has raised to date.

A fourth group, Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly’s Liftoff PAC, received money from the National Association of Realtors, which isn’t affiliated with a specific corporation but advocates for the interests of the retail industry. Liftoff PAC gave $2,500 to Franken’s campaign.

Skirting the pledge?

Is accepting leadership donations skirting the pledge?

End Citizens United, an interest group seeking to overturn the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave more freedom to corporations to spend money influencing elections, originated the pledge that Franken and many other Democrats are taking this election cycle.

The group endorses Democratic candidates for Congress, and most of the candidates it supports, but not all, have taken its pledge to not take corporate PAC donations.

Franken has kept to the rules of that pledge by not taking money from corporate PACs, and the organization says there’s a meaningful difference between taking money from a corporate PAC and a leadership PAC with some corporate PAC backing.

In an emailed statement, End Citizens United spokesperson Tina Olechowski said receiving money from a leadership PAC is not “remotely equivalent” to receiving money from a corporate PAC.

“Candidates who reject corporate PAC money deny corporations the ability to have access or sway once in office,” Olechowski said. “Leadership PACs are run by members of Congress to help elect more Democrats or Republicans. It is not surprising for Democrats to support Democratic candidates and Republicans to support Republican candidates.”

Grassley response

Grassley’s campaign spokesperson, though, said Franken’s wording is misleading, especially in his most recent ad, and that corporate PAC money has ended up in his campaign.

“In his ad, Mike Franken promised he would be a senator who ‘doesn’t take’ money from ‘corporate special interests.’ The truth is, he says one thing and does another,” Grassley campaign spokesperson Michaela Sundermann said. “Simply because corporate cash flows through another entity before it reaches his campaign doesn’t magically make it any less 'corporate.'

"Mike Franken’s attempts to play word games with Iowans and sneakily accept corporate cash funneled through back channels says everything Iowans need to know about Franken's commitment to keeping his word.“

Influence and access

Michael Kang, a Northwestern University law professor who has written on campaign finance, said while Franken’s claim of refusing corporate PAC money is true, there is a sense in which corporate PAC money is reaching his campaign indirectly.

“I don't think it's a case where he's lying, but it's also a case where there's some context involved,” he said. “And it is true that some corporate support is ending up helping his campaign out. So, like a lot of things in campaign finance, it’s really complicated.”

Corporate PAC donations are largely about granting access to members of Congress, said Pete Quist, deputy research director for OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign donations.

Research has shown that major donors to campaigns, including PACs, have an easier time getting a meeting with an officeholder than a person or group who has not donated, he said. In that sense, it’s unlikely that the donations corporate committees make to leadership PACs will grant that kind of access to Franken if he’s elected, Quist and Kang agreed.

“it's harder for him to have a relationship with the corporate PAC, and it's harder for a corporate PAC to have influence over him when the corporate PAC is not the one that's making the decision to direct their money to him. Instead the leadership PAC is intervening,” Kang said.

It's generally easier for non-incumbent candidates to eschew corporate PAC donations because corporate PACs overwhelmingly give to sitting members of Congress. Both Democrats and Republicans who accept their donations get a major financial boost, Quist said.

Grassley has raised more than $7.6 million for his re-election bid since 2017. Since the beginning of 2021, he brought in $1.6 million from PACs, with about 77 percent of that coming from business-related PACs, according to OpenSecrets.

“Once you are an elected official, and once you’re running for re-election, corporate political action money tends to come in in a big way, and early,” Quist said.