>As a democrat and politcal hack, I personally was really irritated to
>receive a mailing from the State DFL in SD59B (University / NE) last
>week. It was a mailing for Kahn, Pogemiller, Sabo et al. It said
>paid for by the state DFL, Mike Erlandson, chair. It didn't even seem to
>mention Gore. That would have at least given it some justification in
>Nader country.
>
>This seems like a reprehensible allocation of resources. The Nader voters
>alone will be enough to reelect the full DFL slate in 59B where there were
>3000 DFL primary voters and 193 Republicans.
This may be explained by some overly assertive activity by the
Federal Elections Commission. They have reached the strange conclusion
that is now longer allowable for political parties to mix endorsements for
Federal races with state & local races, like for instance joint literature
pieces listing all the DFL endorsed candidates. Seems to me that's pretty
much the definition of a Sample Ballot -- having all the DFL candidates
from President to local dog-catcher is the point!
The FEC claims that this is somehow using state or local money to
support federal races, or maybe vice-versa, and is not allowed, even though
this is accounted for and the sample ballot costs are allocated to the
various campaigns as in-kind expenditures.
I know the Minneapolis DFL had to really fight with the State DFL
to get them to include the Minneapolis endorsed referendums on the sample
ballots for Minneapolis. They said that the FEC was already threatening
them if they did this. They said that the FEC had already filed complaints
against the Mn DFL Party several times over similar situations.
