A whole PAC of trouble

COEUR d’ALENE — With primary elections a little more than a month out, some of the tactics used by political action committees are coming under question.

The Kootenai County Republican Concerned Citizens PAC, which has an acronym identical to the party’s Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, issued its endorsements earlier this week but nobody from the PAC is willing to discuss how they were selected.

Nor will they explain why the group is listed on the Idaho Secretary of State’s website as an affiliate of the Republican Party.

The elections branch of the Secretary of State’s Office said whoever filed the paperwork to form the PAC said it was associated with the party, so it ended up on the Republican Party’s committee list. Nobody from the party has contacted the Secretary of State’s Office to say the listing was inappropriate.

The Reagan Republican Victory Fund was also listed as a party-affiliated PAC.

David Johnston, executive director of the state Republican Party, said he was unaware of the listings and added he was going to contact the Secretary of State’s Office to have the PACs removed.

“No they are not affiliated with the party. Those are not our PACs,” Johnston said. “They should not be listed like that.”

Furthermore, Johnston said, despite the PAC’s similar acronym to the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, the party does not endorse candidates in the primary elections.

“Not only do we not endorse candidates, we stay completely out of the primary campaigns altogether,” Johnston said.

The Press obtained a copy of a 2-year-old email dated March 24, 2014. It was sent from Republican precinct committeewoman Jennifer Locke to a handful of county GOP precinct committee members to review the PAC’s “District 3 and 2 Obamacare address sides” that were eventually mailed to endorse primary candidates in that election cycle.

Brent Regan, a significant financial supporter of the PAC in 2014, was sent a copy of that email, but said Thursday afternoon he knows nothing about the group and deferred all questions to the PAC’s treasurer, John Thyssen III.

“I just gave them money, I don’t have anything to say about them,” Regan said.

When contacted by phone Thursday, Thyssen said he was not willing to discuss the PAC’s endorsement process, but said he would get back in touch with The Press later in the afternoon. That did not happen.

Jeff Ward, who is listed as the Reagan Republican Victory Fund’s contact person, said he is aware the Reagan Republican Victory Fund was also listed as a party-affiliated group.

“We are listed up there too, but we shouldn’t be,” he said, adding he doesn’t know how his PAC made the list. “I think we probably ended up there because our name has the word Republican in it. We never did anything to be listed there.”

Ward said it is possible the KCRCC PAC was put on the affiliated list in the same manner, but he added the group has shown some deceptive behaviors in the past.

“The naming of that PAC is definitely deceptive,” he said. “And no one from the public knows who makes the decisions for that group, and nobody will talk about it.”

Ward said he is not sure if the Reagan Republicans will endorse primary candidates this year. He said his group was squeezed out of the 2014 primaries by the battle between the KCRCC PAC and the Republican North Idaho PAC.

Ward said he believes the KCRCC PAC is closely aligned with the Idaho Freedom Foundation. Regan is a board member of the Idaho Freedom Foundation.

Sandy Patano, chairwoman of the Republican North Idaho PAC, suspects the PAC and the foundation are aligned as well.

She said the Idaho Freedom Foundation is a nonprofit that is designed to raise money for candidates that support their own ideology similar to a PAC, but the people donating to that organization get a tax write-off.

“Donors cannot get a tax benefit for political contributions to a PAC,” she said, adding the IFF put out a political scorecard on state candidates just one week after absentee ballots were mailed out last week for the primary elections. That, she said, proves IFF is a political organization.

Patano said, in her opinion, the KCRCC is deceptive as well.

“I don't like the last-minute formation of these PACs,” she said, adding they are created at the last minute to deceive the voters. “These are not mainstream Republicans. They have very extreme viewpoints.”

She said the acronym itself just goes to show their intent to deceive, especially when they send out mailers with that acronym.

“The voters are seeing stuff that looks like it came from the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee,” she said. “It really drives me crazy. Don’t be fooled. These PACs are not reasonable and rational Republicans.”