Super PAC Violated Reporting Requirements for Ad Attacking Senate Candidate Sheehy

On February 14, 2024, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that the super PAC “Last Best Place PAC” (LBP PAC) failed to report independent expenditures for an ad attacking Tim Sheehy, a Republican primary candidate for the U.S. Senate in Montana. The complaint alleges that one of LBP PAC’s ads, titled “Shady Sheehy,” expressly advocated for Sheehy’s electoral defeat and was therefore an “independent expenditure” under the Federal Election Campaign Act, such that the ad triggered specific reporting requirements with which LBP PAC failed to comply. 

As a result of LBP PAC’s reporting violations, voters were denied crucial real-time information about the super PAC’s electoral spending, which would have helped them evaluate its ads; LBP PAC’s 2023 year-end report eventually disclosed that it disbursed nearly all of its funds to a vendor with links to the Democratic Party, and that the LBP PAC received all of its funding from a Democratic dark money corporation, Majority Forward.