FEC complaints filed by a conservative group take aim at the DCCC's strategy of cost-sharing with candidates on Trump ads. | Getty Complaints allege House Democrats’ Trump ads break campaign finance law

A conservative-leaning watchdog group is accusing the DCCC and a dozen of its candidates of using illegal advertising practices this fall, arguing in new complaints that the committee has used its ad strategy to direct extra money to a number of its campaigns.

The FEC complaints center on some of the growing number of Democratic TV ads linking Republican House candidates to Donald Trump. It’s a potentially devastating line of attack given Trump’s unpopularity, and the DCCC has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in coordination with some candidates to help them air the ads — well in excess of the normal $48,100 limit on coordinated expenditures in most House races.


Some candidates have legally exceeded the party-coordination limits in recent elections by making carefully worded “hybrid” ads, which justify the unlimited cost splitting by making generic references to the parties as well as mentioning local candidates. But the DCCC is sharing massive campaign costs on ads directly naming a presidential candidate as well as local House candidates, which have prompted a series of FEC complaints from the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust.

“This is a clear violation,” said FACT executive director Matt Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney in the George W. Bush administration.

The DCCC declined to comment on its ad strategy. A spokeswoman said FACT is trying to prevent Democrats from linking Trump and down-ballot candidates.

“Knowing full well the damage Donald Trump is causing to their poll numbers, House Republicans are desperately grasping at any opportunity to hide their support for him and his dangerous agenda — even resorting to frivolous complaints and meritless legal action,” DCCC spokeswoman Meredith Kelly said in a statement. “Sadly for them, it’s too late to paper over their long and steady support for the unfit and unhinged Donald Trump.”

Many of the Democratic candidates hit with complaints have aired traditional hybrid ads with the DCCC as well as ads that mention Trump. “Darrell Issa and the tea party Republicans tried to play politics with our lives,” says a 9/11 first responder in a hybrid ad from Doug Applegate, the Democrat challenging GOP Rep. Darrell Issa in California.

But Applegate has also aired two ads which link Issa to Trump. They were paid for jointly by Applegate and the DCCC, which have together spent nearly $1 million on TV ads, according to a source tracking ad buys. Some but not nearly all of that spending could be on regular coordinated ads, which can have unrestricted content — but do have restrictions on total spending by the DCCC.

The spending has been a big help to Applegate, who like many other Democratic House challengers burst onto the scene relatively late this year and faces a well-funded opponent.

“Just like Trump, Issa gamed the system to line his own pockets,” one ad’s narrator says. In the other spot, Trump’s lewd 2005 comments about grabbing women without consent play as a narrator says, “Darrell Issa says Donald Trump is the obvious choice for president. ... It’s time to put country first. Say no to Donald Trump and Darrell Issa.”

FACT’s complaint against Applegate argues that his ads naming Trump are not hybrid ads, and that there is thus no legal justification for cost-sharing on them beyond the normal limits without the traditional generic mention of the other party.

“The generic reference to candidates ... is crucial to the concept of hybrid advertisements: that portion of the advertisement is attributable to the party committee solely because the political party derives proportional benefit from the advertisement’s generic party references,” FACT’s complaint against Applegate reads. “Without generic party references, the political party committee derives no benefit from its portion of the advertisement, and the costs of the political party’s portion must be paid for as a coordinated party expenditure or classified as an in-kind contribution to the clearly identified candidate.”

FACT, which has filed FEC complaints against other several other Democratic groups in the last two years, issued similar complaints against the DCCC and 11 other Democratic House challengers: Bryan Caforio and Michael Eggman of California, Morgan Carroll of Colorado, Stephanie Murphy of Florida, Jim Mowrer of Iowa, Suzanna Shkreli of Michigan, Ruben Kihuen of Nevada, Colleen Deacon of New York, Steve Santarsiero of Pennsylvania, Pete Gallego of Texas, and Tom Nelson of Wisconsin. The complaints also name Hillary Clinton’s campaign (because, they argue, she is the beneficiary of ads attacking Trump).

Campaign law experts have been puzzled by the slew of Trump-focused Democratic ads which — as FACT points out — are not traditional hybrid ads but which are paid for similarly, according to their end-of-ad disclaimers.

“These raise very tricky questions” about the legal justification for the cost-splitting, said Larry Noble, a former FEC general counsel now at the Campaign Legal Center. “It shows how parties are constantly looking for new ways to get around various limits, in this case the coordinated expenditure limit.”

Though the DCCC has declined to discuss its ad strategy, a Democratic source had previously told POLITICO that “the legal logic is that it’s half an issue ad paid for by the DCCC and half a candidate ad paid for by the candidate.”

“If they were to say it’s half an ad about Donald Trump, arguably ... they might argue it’s an electioneering communication or a regular campaign ad against Trump,” Noble continued, referring to types of political ads that mention or attack candidates on policy grounds or expressly advocate their election or defeat.

The DCCC’s independent expenditure reports do include numerous media expenses against Trump, who has been a theme in the committee’s standalone, independent advertising as well as Democratic candidate advertising. Among the millions of dollars in the DCCC’s independent expenditure filings are over $150,000 in payments to The New Media Firm, Applegate’s media consultants, for media buys and production expenses opposing Trump — though the reports do not indicate the district in which the money was spent.

The National Republican Congressional Committee said House Democrats are using the FEC’s tendency to deadlock on tough issues as a shield to spend extra money with candidates in the 2016 elections.

“Democrats are banking on the fact that the FEC’s three Democratic commissioners will force a deadlock and save the Clinton campaign and the DCCC from any enforcement action,” NRCC spokeswoman Katie Martin said in a statement.

