According to FEC records, Julie Doolittle, wife of Representative John T. Doolittle (R-CA), has received an unprecedented $140,000 from Rep. Doolittle's leadership PAC since 2003. Julie Doolittle runs a one-person firm called Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions, which receives a 15 percent commission from the leadership PAC on donations that she is "directly involved in raising."
But this would imply that Julie Doolittle has been directly involved in raising every single dollar netted by Rep. Doolittle's leadership PAC, the Superior California Federal Leadership Fund. During the 2004 election cycle she received $68,630, or 15 percent of the $457,533 raised by the PAC. And in the current election cycle she has received $69,896, 15 percent of the $465,973 raised thus far. Troubling is the fact that Rep. Doolittle's leadership PAC lists donations that are not connected to Sierra Dominion, a company without a telephone listing or website.
However, aides for Rep. Doolittle claim that those donations were raised at events organized by his wife. And his chief of staff asserts that "[t]he congressman has used his leadership PAC and his campaign committee in a legal, ethical and responsible manner, and there is no evidence whatsoever that he has used his committees for personal gain."
Though more restrictive with "personal use" expenditures than leadership PACs, Rep. Doolittle's campaign committee has also financed major gifts for volunteers, staff members, and supporters. The campaign committee's gift expenditures totaled more than $40,000 and included lavish purchases at Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany & Co., and Best Buy, and several club memberships.
While leadership PACs are designed to help elect other candidates to Congress, management of them for other purposes, including personal expenditures, is a "common and growing phenomenon." All in all, Rep. Doolittle's activities, particularly his wife's commission, raise serious questions about the legality of leadership PACs:
"I don't know if there's anything comparable [to the commissions received by Julie Doolittle]," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a watchdog group that called last month for an investigation of Doolittle by the House ethics committee. "If this is okay, it is a road map for how to convert substantial sums of campaign money to personal use."
We must find a way to close any loopholes in leadership PACs.
