Matt Rosendale's self-dealing campaign loan highlights a finance loophole

For the past few weeks, Bryce Bennett has been knocking doors in Missoula for his state Senate campaign. A four-termer in the Montana House of Representatives, he’s accustomed to constituents talking about health care and education. But lately, he says, some have been raising the issue of campaign-finance law — and, more specifically, the criticism swirling around Republican U.S. Senate candidate Matt Rosendale.

“Clearly, our campaign-finance laws were intended to create campaigns that only receive a certain amount of money from individuals, so that nobody could be corrupted by an overwhelming amount of money coming from any individual,” Bennett says. “Matt has clearly found a way to sneak past the will of the voters of Montana, and we certainly have to do something about that.”

Over the past four months, a small collection of Republican donors from across the country, roughly two-dozen in all, have been helping Rosendale pay back a personal loan he made to his unsuccessful 2014 U.S. House campaign. The contributions, made to his 2018 Senate committee and earmarked for debt retirement, come from the likes of oil tycoon Wayne Laufer, political consultant Roy Pfautch and Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus. These out-of-staters’ awareness of Rosendale’s outstanding debt to himself was no coincidence. Before the June primary, his campaign produced a contribution form — obtained by the Daily Beast and posted online — directing recipients to the 2014 debt retirement and informing them that any donations to that cause would raise their allowable maximum individual contribution from $5,400 to $8,000, or $16,000 per couple.

On May 14, Rosendale put those debt-retirement collections to use, reporting a loan repayment of $32,831. The next day, May 15, Rosendale made a personal loan of $32,831 to his 2018 Senate committee.

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