Groups call on Greiner to resign from American Future Fund

Now that she is serving as a member of the Iowa Senate, Sandy Greiner should step down from her position as president of the controversial nonprofit American Future Fund (AFF), several government watchdogs said Tuesday.

Greiner, a Republican from Keota who was sworn in for her first term in the state Senate on Monday, told The Iowa Independent that she would no longer serve as president of the American Future Fund’s political action committee but would continue to act as president of the 501(c)4.

In 2010, AFF’s 501(c)4 spent $9.6 million on federal races around the country. Of that total, $7.4 million was spent in independent expenditures and $2.2 million in electioneering communications. The Iowa Senate Code of Ethics bars a sitting senator from accepting employment, either directly or indirectly, from a political action committee, which is defined as follows:

For the purpose of this rule, a political action committee means a committee, but not a candidate’s committee, which accepts contributions, makes expenditures, or incurs indebtedness in the aggregate of more than seven hundred fifty dollars in any one calendar year to expressly advocate the nomination, election, or defeat of a candidate for public office or to expressly advocate the passage or defeat of a ballot issue or influencing legislative action, or an association, lodge, society, cooperative, union,  fraternity, sorority, educational institution, civic organization, labor organization, religious organization, or professional organization which makes contributions in the aggregate of more than seven hundred fifty dollars in any one calendar year to expressly advocate the nomination, election, or defeat of a candidate for public office or ballot issue or influencing legislative action.

The only disclosure forms filed by American Future Fund with the IRS were submitted in 2008 and show the president before Greiner, Nicole Schlinger, received no salary.

Critics say having an elected official in charge of a group spending millions to influence elections is a clear conflict of interest.

“Greiner was elected to serve her constituents, but if she’s also in charge of distributing millions of dollars in secret special interest cash, it raises real questions as to whether she represents everyday Iowans or the millionaires likely funding the American Future Fund. I bet it makes her constituents wonder, too,” said Adam Mason, state policy organizing director for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. “Sandy Greiner should resign from her post at the American Future Fund and leave their attack ad tactics behind so she can focus on the job at hand.”

Lisa Gilbert, deputy director of the voters rights group Public Citizen, said the fact that Greiner stepped down from leading the political action committee shows that she is aware of the “obvious conflict of interest” in being affiliated with the group and being a politician, but “it actually does little to alleviate the material problem.”

“As the American Future Fund is a registered [501(c)4] non-profit, in the post-Citizens United world it has the ability to spend its treasury directly on independent campaign advertisements,” said Gilbert, whose group was one of three that filed a complaint against AFF with the Federal Election Commission. “As the president of an organization that is obviously very focused on politics and is spending liberally from its treasury on election ads, the conflict of interest remains.”

David Donnelly, national campaigns director for campaign finance watchdog Public Campaign Action Fund, called Greiner’s association with AFF “like putting our pay-to-play system on steroids.”

“Instead of wondering whether she’s beholden to the special interests funding her campaigns, her constituents now have to wonder whether the millions she has raised in unlimited secret cash also plays a role in her decisions in the legislature,” he said. “It may not be illegal, but it is unequivocally, clearly wrong,”

Because the group is registered as a 501(c)4 nonprofit, it is not regulated by the Federal Elections Commission or the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board. And unlike other politically active organizations, it is also not mandated to disclose where it gets its funding.

Both Democrats and Republicans have discussed tightening the state’s disclosure laws to force groups like American Future Fund — and its sister organization The Progress Project — to disclose donors if they spend money in state-level campaigns. Even Gov.-elect Terry Branstad has said he’d like to see groups that spend money trying to influence campaigns forced to disclose where they are getting their money.

Greiner sits on the Senate Government Oversight Committee.