July 03, 2009 08:26 PM UTC

Musgrave officially ends campaign, donates money to new employer's program

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• by: BobMoore

(Nice deal if you can get it – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Ex-Rep. Marilyn Musgrave this week formalized an announcement made last month, filing a campaign committee termination report that showed she donated her remaining campaign funds to a program created by her new employer.

More details are in my Coloradoan blog,  https://tr.im/qMxR

The termination report filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission showed that Musgrave donated $50,328.25 on June 1 to the Susan B. Anthony List Education Fund. (This may be the first time a large contribution to a pro-life group was detailed in something called a “termination report,” but I digress.)

To recap, Musgrave was ousted by Democrat Betsy Markey in November 2008. She was hired in March by the Susan B. Anthony List to run its “Votes Have Consequences” program, which will target a still-unspecified number of pro-choice incumbents in 2010. The SBA List is a 501(c)4 organization, which means it can make independent expenditures in political races.

At some point (the SBA List won’t say if it was before or after the Musgrave hire), the group decided to create a separate 501(c)3 nonprofit called the Susan B. Anthony List Education Fund. That fund will be used to create a Youth Leaders Board to train young pro-life activists, according to a June 4 release by the SBA List that announced that the Fort Morgan Republican planned to donate $50,000 in leftover funds from Musgrave for Congress.

Federal campaign finance law allows candidates to donate unexpended campaign funds to charity “as long as the candidate does not receive compensation from the charitable organization before it has expended the entire amount donated.”

The SBA List said the donation was legal because the (c)4 employing Musgrave and the(c)3 receiving the donation are legally separate. I interviewed two former FEC chairmen who agreed with that interpretation.

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