The Secretary of State project was a pretty influential liberal group dedicated to electing Democrats as Secretary of State.  Here’s a 2008 Politico profile of the group.

While researching my book, I came across this article from the Washington Times, Soros and Liberal Groups Seeking Top Election Posts in Battleground States. The article is from June 23 of this year, but there are three serious problems with it.

1. George Soros’s role with the project is minimal.  So far as I can tell, he gave only one $10,000 donation to the group.  The rest of the article highlights Soros’s contributions to other groups, or the contributions to the SOSP by those who are somehow allies of Soros.

2. The article completely misunderstands the nature of non-federal 527s.  The paper writes: “While FEC regulations limit individual donations to a maximum of $2,500 per candidate and $5,000 to a PAC, a number of 527 groups have poured tens of millions of unregulated dollars into various political efforts.”  Here, the author is contrasting rules which apply to federal PACs (and thanks to the emergence of Super-PACs, they don’t apply to many PACs anymore), with the activities of a group involved in actions in the states, involving state elections, which are subject to their own campaign finance rules.

3. Most importantly, it is not clear to me that the SOSP continues to exist.  Their website has not been updated since 2009.  Clicking on the group’s home page leads to an “Account suspended” message.  I see no indication the group is active for 2012.  It is odd that the Washington Times would run such a story without even mentioning this fact.