Federal campaign finance laws protect every American’s right to participate in the political process by requiring transparency from those funding election ads intended to sway voters, allowing them to properly weigh different speakers and messages before casting an informed vote.
When these laws are violated, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is tasked with enforcing them. However, in recent years, the FEC has routinely failed to do its job and properly enforce campaign finance laws, prompting groups like Campaign Legal Center (CLC) to step up and ensure that the law is enforced to protect the public’s transparency interests.
In early 2024, CLC filed an administrative complaint against “Last Best Place PAC” (LBP PAC), a super PAC that spent millions of dollars attacking U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy during the Republican primary in Montana.
These millions of dollars were wholly funded by Majority Forward — the 501(c)(4) dark money group associated with SMP (formerly “Senate Majority PAC”), a super PAC closely aligned with the Democratic Party and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The FEC dismissed CLC’s complaint. This decision disregards the law, the FEC’s own regulations, and the recommendation of the nonpartisan staff lawyers in the agency’s Office of the General Counsel, which agreed with CLC’s concerns. In response, CLC has filed a lawsuit to challenge the FEC’s dismissal in federal court and demand that the Commission follow the law.
CLC’s initial FEC complaint alleged that LBP PAC skirted disclosure requirements for ads expressly advocating against Sheehy’s candidacy, which it was required to report as “independent expenditures” in special pre-election reports and in its regularly scheduled committee filings.
Yet the super PAC did not report any independent expenditures for this period, either in required pre-election reports or in its 2023 year-end committee filing.
For example, CLC’s complaint described one of the PAC’s ads, titled “Shady Sheehy,” that disparaged his character, depicted him on the campaign trail, and clearly referenced his U.S. Senate candidacy — meaning the ad clearly “expressly advocated” for Sheehy’s electoral defeat and therefore qualified as an “independent expenditure.”
The ad, which accuses Sheehy of “buying a Senate seat” and getting “rich off of government contracts,” should have been reported as an independent expenditure, alongside detailed information about its amount, date, and purpose.
These reporting requirements are meant to give voters complete and meaningful information about the groups spending money to sway their votes in federal elections.
The FEC’s decision to dismiss CLC’s complaint ignores that the only reasonable interpretation of LBP PAC’s character attack ads was to oppose Sheehy’s candidacy and fails to uphold the agency’s mandate to enforce vital transparency requirements in federal law.
This sets a dangerous precedent — raising the bar for what qualifies as express advocacy, under reasoning that flouts the law, longstanding agency practice, and simple logic, gives a green light to special interests looking to stay in the dark while they spend huge sums to influence voters in federal elections.
This ruling comes at a time when the FEC is emerging from decades of political gridlock and into a new era of rapid deregulation, as a new voting bloc comprised of all three Republican commissioners and one Democrat have ushered in several decisions that pave the way for money to be poured into the system.
CLC is suing the FEC to protect the public’s right to know and hold the agency accountable for its failure to enforce key transparency requirements in federal campaign finance law.
Montana voters deserve to know who is paying for their attention, and it is the FEC’s mission to enforce that transparency. CLC continues to push for super PACs like Last Best Place PAC to be transparent with voters and will continue to hold the FEC accountable for creating new exceptions and loopholes that benefit secret spending over the American people.