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Rescue Roanoke, a local political action committee, has made no secret as to whom it supports in the upcoming mayoral and city council races.
The committee sent out campaign mailers that attacked Democrats who once sat in those seats as well as those seeking election in November.
The mailer endorsed the Republican candidate for mayor, David Bowers, along with two Republican candidates for the city council, Jim Garrett and Nick Hagen.
The state-mandated fine print on those mailers reads: “Paid for by Rescue Roanoke PAC. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”
An analysis of the PAC’s financial filings with the State Board of Elections, however, shows that Rescue Roanoke has received financial and in-kind support from both Bowers and Garrett. Both candidates said they had no prior knowledge of the advertisement.
“This situation raises a lot of questions to me,” said Elizabeth Shimek, senior legal counsel who focuses on campaign finance at the Campaign Legal Center. The Campaign Legal Center is a nonprofit and nonpartisan watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., that aims to enforce campaign finance laws.
“In an ideal system, we want to see candidates doing all of their spending through their own campaign committee to ensure that their campaign activity is transparent to the public. Voters have a right to know who’s spending to influence their decisions when they cast their ballot,” she said.
A look at those contributions and loans from candidates to Rescue Roanoke
In May, Bowers made a $5,000 loan to the PAC, according to committee finance filings. Roughly $452 of that loan went to pay for an advertisement in The Roanoke Tribune, Bowers said. The PAC repaid the remainder of Bowers’ loan in two installments, one in June and another in July, according to the PAC’s filings with the State Board of Elections.
“I disavow the Rescue Roanoke mailer. I did not authorize the content nor the mailing,” Bowers said in an emailed response to questions about it. “I did not approve it and do not approve of it now.”
Bowers said he takes issue with the mailer’s negative tone. He did not immediately respond to a follow-up question asking why he had loaned the PAC money.
Garrett provided $4,215 in in-kind contributions to the PAC, including IT assistance from Trailblazer, campaign literature such as door hangers, catering at a rally in June, and T-shirts in August, according to campaign finance filings.
When asked about those in-kind contributions, Garrett said he was not familiar with them.
“The treasurer of that PAC and the treasurer of my campaign are one and the same person, and I thought that that was my campaign stuff,” Garrett said in a telephone call on Thursday. He said the money for those items came out of his personal account. “I didn’t know they were categorizing it under their stuff,” he said.
Some of those in-kind contributions from Garrett were made for a reception that benefited other candidates, he later said in the same conversation.
“It’s my understanding that we’re not supposed to be communicating with PACs, so I don’t have any idea what they were doing and really didn’t know that the money I was spending was being categorized for the PAC versus my account,” Garrett said.
Garrett said he had no knowledge of the mailers sent out by the Rescue Roanoke PAC.
“I’ve had no contact with Charlie probably in two or three weeks,” Garrett said of his campaign treasurer, Charlie Nave. “All I do is send him my receipts.”
A shared treasurer between a PAC and a candidate raises questions as to whether the PAC and the candidate are coordinating through that person, Shimek said.
The history of Rescue Roanoke
Nave, who unsuccessfully sought the 11th District seat in Virginia’s House of Delegates in 2021, is listed as Garrett’s campaign treasurer, the Rescue Roanoke PAC treasurer and the PAC’s principal custodian of the books, in statements of organization filed with the State Board of Elections.
What is a political action committee?
Political action committees, or PACs, receive and spend contributions primarily to elect or defeat a clearly identified candidate, according to state statute.
The first reported PAC was launched in 1944 by the Congress of Industrial Organizations — a group of industrial worker unions that existed from 1935 until 1955 — to raise money for former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reelection campaign, according to Open Secrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit that follows money in politics. The CIO’s money came from union members, instead of the union treasury after the Smith Connally Act of 1943 forbade unions from directly contributing to federal candidates. Thus, the first political action committee was formed.
Laws regarding contributions between PACs and candidates vary by state, and Virginia has some of the most permissive campaign finance laws in the country: There is no limit to how much a PAC can contribute to a candidate and no limit to how much a candidate can contribute to a PAC.
Virginia statute requires that an advertisement that identifies a candidate opposed by a PAC must also include the name of the candidate who is intended to benefit from the advertisement, if the sponsor coordinates with, or has the authorization of, the benefited candidate.
Rescue Roanoke filed its first financial report with the State Board of Elections on July 14, 2022. According to its statement of organization, which was amended in May, the PAC exists to support Garrett, Bowers and Hagen.
The PAC received its first infusion of cash in March 2023: a $9,178 contribution from the Charlie Nave for Delegate political committee. It received its second infusion of cash as the $5,000 loan from Bowers this May.
Rescue Roanoke also received $2,035 from Maynard Keller for City Council — Keller’s 2020 campaign committee from his unsuccessful bid for city council — in June. Nave is listed as the treasurer for Keller’s 2020 campaign committee on its statement of organization as well.
Nave said that Rescue Roanoke “stands behind the mailer 100%” in a text message. He did not immediately respond to a request for follow-up questions.
A need for ‘very clear paper trails’
There is no law on the books in Virginia against contributions between a PAC and a candidate, but questions are raised when a candidate contributes to a PAC. Information about those contributions may be accessible through the State Board of Elections’ repository of campaign finance reports, but voters have to dig to find a candidate’s connection to a PAC.
“Even if this is legal, I can see a few reasons why we might have some concerns about this happening,” said John Martin, a research assistant professor of law at the University of Virginia.
He pointed out that, by providing monetary support to the PAC, a candidate is supporting the release of ads paid for by the PAC that could benefit the candidate, without the candidate directly claiming responsibility for the ad.
“When an ad goes out there, there’s a disclaimer on it, that means something,” he said. “The point is that the person or the entity that’s putting the ad out there is standing behind it and is signaling to the public, ‘I am a sponsor of this, I believe what’s being put in this ad and I’m taking ownership over it.’”
When candidates are able to funnel money into PACs that release advertisements, it muddles the transparency of who stands behind the content or messaging of an advertisement that is paid for and released by the PAC, he said.
“It prevents this informational interest that voters have in knowing who’s funding what,” he said. “In a world where money and politics being mixed together can lead to a whole range of bad results, we want to be able to have very clear paper trails.”