The FEC requires that PACs and candidates publicly name their donors. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO Tea party wants socialist treatment

A national tea party group is asking for permission to keep their donors secret — just like the socialists.

Citing a long litany of harassment examples, the Tea Party Leadership Fund is asking the Federal Election Commission for the same right granted to the Socialist Workers Party to shield the names and information of their donors from the public.


In a new request to the FEC shared with POLITICO, the group argues that tea party donors and activists are being targeted for harassment by government officials and private groups — and they cite derogatory comments by politicians and overbearing government investigations as evidence.

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“Nobody likes the communists and really for good reason,” said Dan Backer, the attorney for the group who wrote and filed the complaint. But, Backer said, the same legal principle that grants left-wring groups the right to hide their donors should also cover tea party groups.

“As we very thoroughly document at almost three times the length of the socialist request, tea party supporters are subject to an unprecedented level of harassment and abuse,” Backer said.

If the tea party request is granted, the decision could open the floodgates to outside groups, candidates and political parties who want to hide their donors with the government’s blessing.

“This will be the beginning of a conversation about the burdens and the perils of disclosure,” Backer predicted.

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While some political nonprofits are able to shield their donors, federal law requires that PACs, political parties and candidates make public the names, employers and addresses of their donors.

In recent cycles, though, political nonprofits, organized as 501(c)4s or 501(c)6 organizations, have also emerged as a major political force for the reasons of allowing anonymous money to be spent on political advertising. Those groups that are not required to disclosure their donors under IRS rules.

But federal courts and the FEC have recognized that minor party candidates and other political organizations can be entitled to exemptions from disclosure on behalf of their donors, if they might face government retribution or private harassment.

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The only exemption ever granted by the FEC under this principle, however, is for the Socialist Workers Party. The self-described left-wing political party has been granted the right to keep donors secret since 1990 — a special exemption that was renewed as recently as 2013.

Federal courts have also granted special disclosure exemptions to the Communist Party, Socialist Action and the Freedom Socialist Party.

“We are not advocates of financial disclosure. That’s not the problem in this country,” Socialist Workers Party chairman Steve Clark told POLITICO in April.

Backer and the Tea Party Leadership Fund argues that the IRS scandal coupled with comments by President Barack Obama, top administration officials and members of Congress is ample evidence that tea party groups and their donors and activists have been specifically targeted for harassment by high ranking government officials.

To document those abuses, Backer shipped a 1,438 page appendix cataloging his evidence to the FEC via FedEx. (Only a summary of the appendix was shared with POLITICO).

The IRS scandal — where a top official agency admitted in May to targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny — figures prominently in the Tea Party Leadership Fund evidence of harassment.

Other evidence: Obama’s use of the pejorative term “tea-baggers,” Vice President Joe Biden’s comments that tea party activists were acting like “terrorists,” and hundreds of examples of members of Congress, and administration officials speaking negatively of the movement.

“It’s the president, it’s the House and the Senate. It’s numerous federal agencies,” Backer said.

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