Is Gail Schwartz breaking campaign laws by colluding with an outside group to run television ads? It certainly looks like it.
The ad by the Democrat’s House Majority PAC features all sorts of lovely video shots of Schwartz talking with someone in a cowboy hat, talking with seniors, talking in front of a school, all of which came from Schwartz’s campaign.
Asked about this amazing coincidence by the Denver Post, Schwartz parses and evades:
“I didn’t dictate anything. I didn’t coordinate anything,” she said. “I put together a campaign, a race, a fundraising strategy to run this race on my own.”
What she did was post the background video footage on her YouTube page, that was clearly intended to be used in the ad.
Schwartz video:
Commercial:
The Democratic Party has been screaming for years about this sort of campaign financing, which by the way is supposed to be independent. In other words, no coordination between the campaigns.
Here’s what the Denver Post had to say about Schwartz’s YouTube video. It doesn’t look like they are buying her excuse, either:
That two-minute clip itself is not a campaign commercial. Rather, its sole intent is to serve as background footage for outside groups. No one speaks in the clip, and by Friday afternoon, it had been viewed only 349 times.
“This sort of conduct really pushes the envelope on coordination,” said Brendan Fischer of The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
Ironically, the ad accuses incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton of coordinating with outside interests to draft legislation on oil and gas leases on the Thompson Divide — legislation that has never been introduced in Congress.
This is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black, the only difference is, Schwartz’s campaign appears to have broken the law.