POLITICO: “The centrist group consists of a constellation of entities, some of which disclose donor names. But the main one is a nonprofit which, unlike political parties, does not have to reveal the names of its funders. And in an interview with POLITICO, its CEO, Nancy Jacobson, declined to do so. …
“Experts in campaign finance law say that the organization is walking right up to the line of what is permissible.
““Draft efforts, generally speaking, are outside the purview of the Federal Election Campaign Act. That goes back to the late 70s with the labor-backed draft Ted Kennedy effort, trying to get him to run against Jimmy Carter,” said David Mason, the former chair of the FEC. “If they have a federal candidate, then things start to change… Then your voter registration efforts and the other things they do can become subject to FECA regulations.” …
“Adav Noti, a former Federal Election Commission lawyer, said that if No Labels was floating potential candidates in its meetings with donors, it could open the group to legal scrutiny. …
“Noti represented the FEC in a 2008 case which decided in favor of a similar group, called Unity08, on the assumption that “neither donors nor candidates would know at the time of the donations which candidate would ultimately benefit from the group’s convention.”
This seems to me a loophole in the law that should not have opened up and needs to be closed. A group seeking ballot access is functioning as a political party even if it has not yet identified the specific nominee it wants ballot access for. Indeed, this point seems especially applicable to presidential elections, because technically ballot access is for the slate of electors who are pledged to support whoever the party’s nominee will be. It’s been a while since I specifically looked into the various state laws regarding ballot access rules for presidential campaigns (and when I did I wasn’t focused on the campaign finance dimension), but I seem to recall that political parties can earn their spot on the November general election ballot before their nominating convention officially confirms the identity of their presidential nominee. More fundamentally, campaign finance law permits nondisclosure of donors to (c)(4) nonprofits because their “major purpose” is not election-specific. But a group that is aiming to put a candidate on the ballot, even if it doesn’t yet know specifically the identity of its candidate, is clearly engaging in election-specific activity and not general political discourse including “issue” advocacy.