Don’t expect Sen. Vitter to cough up $70K to pay for legal fees to his campaign operation

Don’t expect Sen. David Vitter to cough up $70,000 to Louisiana to pay for legal fees to his campaign operation

Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne must be cracking under the strain of running for governor. He somehow got it into his head that U.S. Sen. David Vitter is forcing “the state of Louisiana to pay $70,000 in legal fees to his campaign operation.”

But the money is going to the Fund for Louisiana’s Future, which has absolutely nothing to do with Vitter. How could it? It is a PAC, for crying out loud, and is thus forbidden to collaborate with Vitter’s campaign for governor.

Perhaps Dardenne is confused because the FFLF was expressly established to raise money in support of Vitter’s candidacy, which it has so far done to the tune of $4 million.

But all the learned judges who have ruled on campaign finance accept that there is an impenetrable, invisible wall that rules out any collaboration between PACs and the politicians they are dying to put into office. Cynics laugh at the proposition that PACs and campaigns operate in different spheres, but surely Dardenne is not one of them. That would be alarming, for a PAC has been set up to provide GOP support for Dardenne’s own gubernatorial run.

Read more: http://theadvocate.com/columnists/13101556-123/james-gill-dont-expect-sen