You are saying you don't trust Fallon because you don't know exactly how much he's raising for I'M for Iowa, and you don't know how he is spending the money.

I don't trust Boswell because of my experience of how he has represented me for the past 11 years. I am tired of getting action alerts from the various groups I belong to, urging me to contact Boswell on this or that issue. Inevitably, all I am asking Boswell to do is to take the mainstream, majority Democatic position for or against whatever bill is the issue.

Why is it that progressive interest groups always need to mobilize their supporters to put pressure on Boswell on these issues? Most of the House Democrats are already taking the right position on these bills without action alerts.

You may prefer Boswell because we know what we are getting, but I would rather not have to worry about how my representative is going to vote on key economic and environmental policies.

I don't think Ed is an expert in campaign finance, if you mean he's got legal expertise.  What he has is passion, and credibility that comes from representing his neighborhoood, rather than moving across district lines to chase after a Congressional seat like Boswell did.  But like most elected officials, he is a generalist, not an expert.

As for imagining ways to funnel money to a candidate's personal account, how about hiring them to give a speech.  Huckabee made his living while he ran for President by giving paid speeches.  He pointed out that he at least wasn't campaigning while being paid to be a Congressman!  Can Boswell say that?

While we're talking about ethics and campaign finance, how much of my taxpayer dollars has Boswell spent on campaign-style direct mail pieces this year?

If Fallon is elected to Congress, I also agree that it would be inappropriate for him to continue running the I'M for Iowa business.

I don't know the details about what it takes to set up a 501(c)4 compared to a business like I'M for Iowa. I know from friends who are in the business world that it gets complicated when you are trying to decide whether to establish a partnership, and S-corp, a limited liability corporation, etc.  There are pros and cons to each variant.

I am involved in several non-profit organizations, and it is frustrating not to be able to take a position on certain issues because of limitations related to 501(c)3 status. So I see a niche for a business like I'M for Iowa, although as I wrote at Bleeding Heartland, I have never contributed to I'M for Iowa and haven't followed its work closely.

To me, none of this rises to a level of concern comparable to my concerns about Boswell. I know from experience that he will often not represent my views on matters of great importance to me, and I know that he takes a lot of money from corporate PACs that are trying to push him in a direction that is different from mine.

Also, I would like to know: how much taxpayer money did Boswell spend when he sent out three fliers that had the look and feel of campaign materials? Producing and mailing those must have been very costly. They were very different from the typical constituent letter that I have received many times from members of Congress.

I am surprised no journalists are digging into the ethical questions surrounding Boswell's use of his franking privilege.

When it comes to the broader story about I'M For Iowa, consider this hypothetical:

What if Leonard Boswell sent out an email from his personal email account soliciting donations to his personal bank account in exchange for intangible political advocacy services?

Don't you think Ed Fallon would be the first in line to criticize him for inviting corruption?  Even if, as Fallon says (and I believe him), he respects Boswell and doesn't think he's an evil or dishonest man, Boswell's actions would introduce too many ethical questions to allow him to effectively represent us in Congress.

From the perspective of tax law, I'M For Iowa is essentially a joint personal bank account of Ed and Lynn.  Ed solicits donations in exchange for political advocacy.  We have no idea what money is coming in (and what the conditions of the donations are), and we have no idea how money is being spent.  And Ed has no plans to stop doing it even if he gets elected to Congress, as far as I have been told.

I always thought Ed was something of an expert on campaign finance issues, which was in my mind his greatest selling point.  He should know what PACs are for.  He should know what 501(c)(4) organizations are for.  Those sections of the tax code are written expressly for what Ed wanted to do with I'M For Iowa.  And yeah, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to set them up, but there's a reason for it.  The public has an interest in requiring organizations that raise money and spend it on political issues to disclose certain things about themselves.

The public also has chosen to limit the total amount an individual is allowed to donate to federal candidates for what I'd consider to be very justifiable reasons.  I always thought Ed agreed with caps on donations, since he voluntarily imposed one on himself in 2006.  The reason why there are caps is not primarily to prevent campaigns from raising a lot of money, it is to preserve the faith people have in their elected officials.  It's to avoid the appearance of corruption (or even worse, it's to avoid corruption itself).

Donations to Ed's congressional campaigns are capped, but donations to I'M For Iowa are not.

Ed is allowed to pay himself however much he wants as a salary from I'M For Iowa without having to justify it to anyone.  And he is allowed to donate an unlimited amount of his personal funds to his congressional campaign.

So imagine this scenario: a donor to Ed's campaign maxes out and wants to give more.  So he or she donates $20,000 to I'M For Iowa.  Ed then pays himself a salary of $20,000 for the month of March.  And then he writes his campaign a $20,000 check from his personal bank account.

The defense of Ed that I've already heard is that he's a good guy who isn't currently getting any $20,000 checks and isn't currently paying himself $20,000 a month as a salary.  The problem is, we don't actually know whether that's true, because we don't know anything about I'M For Iowa's income and expenditures.

The reason for campaign finance reform is not that our elected officials are evil.  It's that a lot of well-meaning people get elected to office in a system that has too much money going through everybody's hands without the public paying enough attention.  That has been Ed's core argument for a really long time.  And yet he fails to recognize that the financial structure he has set up lends itself very easily to this exact phenomenon.

To me, this means one of two things: either Ed doesn't understand campaign finance issues as well as I thought he did, or he thinks he is above them.

The issue of Boswell receiving corporate PAC money might be of concern to many, but we are only able to complain about it because he is forced to disclose it.  If AT&T; or Exxon/Mobil or any other corporation wanted to fund Ed Fallon's campaign, they wouldn't even have to go through their PAC, they wouldn't be limited in the amount of money they could give, and we would never find out about it.  They could write a check straight from AT&T;'s corporate bank account to I'M For Iowa, and we would never know.

And even if it's unlikely that they would have done that, the point is that if it did happen, we would never know.  That troubles me, and it should trouble anyone who cares about campaign finance reform.

How does that compare to Boswell taking $5K contributions from corporate PACs?

Now may I suggest a follow-up story on how the legislature has defended the old campaign contribution-as-bribe system by killing the public financing system Ed advocates.

Or maybe you could investigate another alternative:  getting more multi-millionaires to run so contributions become unnecessary and these “ethical gray areas” turn to black.

I don’t think Ed is an expert in campaign finance, if you mean he’s got legal expertise.  What he has is passion, and credibility that comes from representing his neighborhoood, rather than moving across district lines to chase after a Congressional seat like Boswell did.  But like most elected officials, he is a generalist, not an expert.

As for imagining ways to funnel money to a candidate’s personal account, how about hiring them to give a speech.  Huckabee made his living while he ran for President by giving paid speeches.  He pointed out that he at least wasn’t campaigning while being paid to be a Congressman!  Can Boswell say that?