Do We Need Another PAC?

I question whether the Democratic party needs yet another PAC. Everyone running for office has a PAC, we have the National PACs (not to mention the party PACs). I received the following message today from the Next Generation Democrats:

Fellow Young Voters,

Morris Meyer, candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates, is a young, energetic, fighter who has won the endorsement of Next Generation Democrats and today he needs your help, not with your money but with your voice. Today RaisingKaine, the largest and most influential Virginia blog is going to choose to endorse a candidate in Morris' primary race.

Morris and his campaign team have been out talking to voters in the district that will make the difference on Election Day while his opponent has been calling friends and former co-workers and asking them to make accounts so he can stack the poll numbers.

So we need to get Morris' back and win this endorsement for him so he can keep talking to voters. If you haven't heard of Morris before, he is a truly progressive candidate who is not afraid to stand up and say what he really believes (hard to find among some politicians today). He is also a trained presenter of the Al Gore power point presentation and has given it all over the country to newspaper editorial boards, at George Mason and elsewhere. If you want some more info, head over to www.morrismeyer.com

So here is what we need you to do

1. Go to www.RaisingKaine.com

2. Create a new account

3. Vote in the poll for Morris Meyer (it is on the left-hand sidebar, just above the search box)

4. Get 4 of your friends to do the same thing

Thank You,

Nate de la Piedra

Exec. Dir.

Mike Burns

President

Sean Sukol

Political Dir.

So, we have a PAC asking their members to go to a blog run by another PAC to vote to see who that PAC will endorse. Now, it is Raising Kaine, which is currently riding a large wave of success after Jim Webb's campaign, but do we actually need another layer here? I assume that the majority of the PAC members are readers of Raising Kaine.

Some other problems I have with this specific PAC:

 
1. Lack of Disclosure - Mike Burns works for Morris Meyer and this isn't disclosed in his bio. Their freshman deputy finance director, Grant Herring, does disclose his employment with the Janet Oleszek campaign. Nate de la Piedra received $2,000 from the Oleszek campaign. This e-mail does not disclose any of this information.

 
2. "A Next Generation Democrats candidate is under 40..." - Meyer is 42, Olezsek just turned 60. These are their only two candidates. However, both of these candidates employ members of this PAC.

 
3. Fundraising for only two candidates, Meyer and Oleszek, who employ members of this PAC.

I have to question the reason we need another PAC like this. Isn't it better that Democrats donate wisely instead of wasting funds into a PAC that obviously fronts only candidates that employ them?

Mr. de la Piedra may have good intentions, but his actions are gaining little traction (no finance report filed, so no money raised), and he would be better off continuing to work for candidates and stop wasting his time by creating yet another PAC to spam our inboxes.

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