Here's Another Thing Missed: Americans for Prosperity Is Not a PAC

As I mentioned yesterday, the Right Wing News report got a good bit wrong on the Senate Conservatives Fund. In particular, the report omits $4.7 million in hard dollars that SCF raised and passed on directly to candidates, it omits the $2.6 million SCF’s super PAC spent on independent expenditures for those candidates, and it improperly counts $3.5 million SCF spent on issue ads as money wasted on overhead.

I also said Americans for Prosperity being on the list should raise eyebrows. In fact, today there is a new footnote in the report about AFP. In the mean time, I’d reached out to AFP on the matter because, again, AFP should not be considered a scam PAC if only because AFP is not a PAC at all.

Levi Russell tells me “we told John Hawkins at least twice prior to print that AFP does not have a PAC and is not associated with a PAC of any kind. I also let him know we do not endorse candidates or give money to candidates. When we were included (incorrectly) on his list anyway, I went to John a 3rd time and finally got this correction…. The FEC reports that were incorrectly categorized by Open Secrets were disclosures for our express advocacy advertising and field efforts, when our 500+ door knock team moved to a direct electoral message (Defeat [mc_name name=’Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’H001049′ ] for example) instead of issue advocacy. Those efforts were a very small percentage of our spending last year. The tens of millions we spent on issue advocacy is not tracked by Open Secrets.

“As you rightly pointed out about SCF, our issue advocacy ads can hardly be described as advertising for our org.”

I would agree with that. Take a look for yourself. Right Wing News characterized these advertisements as mostly promoting the organization. Watch and judge for yourself:

We’ve got a host of real scam PAC’s out there. They are a real problem. We need to take them on. AFP, Madison Project, Club For Growth, FreedomWorks, Senate Conservatives Fund, American Crossroads (which I don’t even much care for) are not part of the problem.