Mitt Romney super PAC pays $50,000 fine for illegal TV ad
The third-party group illegally ran the exact same ad the Romney campaign used in 2012.
Nearly four years later, Mitt Romney’s super PAC’s illegal campaign ad is catching up to them.
Restore Our Future, the largest 2012 pro-Romney super PAC, agreed this week to pay a $50,000 fine after the “independent’’ political committee used nearly the exact same TV ad as the former Massachusetts governor’s official 2008 presidential campaign.
Campaign Legal Center, a campaign finance watchdog group, announced Friday that Restore Our Future had agreed to pay the civil penalty, four years after the center had filed a complaint.
Originally used the Massachusetts governor’ 2008 primary campaign, the 30-second ad “Saved’’ was rerun by Restore Our Future as their own in 2012. With the exception of the closing credits disclaimer and a few still-frames, the two ads are identical.
Watch the Romney campaign’s 2008 ad…
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…and then Restore Our Future’s 2012 ad:
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Super PACs, or independent expenditure-only committee, are permitted to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations, and unions to advocate for or against political candidates, as long as they do not directly interact or coordinate with the candidate’s official campaign.
“This was a blatant violation of the law,’’ Paul S. Ryan, the Campaign Legal Center’s ironically-named executive director, said in a statement. “It’s unacceptable that the FEC took nearly four years to resolve the matter with a fine that amounts to a light slap on the wrist for millions of dollars in illegal spending.’’
According to the Wall Street Journal, Restore Our Future spent $4.3 million to run “Saved’’ in nine battleground states starting in May 2012. The super PAC, run by former Romney aides, spent a total of $142,097,336 for the Republican presidential candidate during the 2012 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org.
The super PAC’s lawyer Charles Spies, now a lawyer for Jeb Bush’s super PAC, told the Huffington Post in 2012 that the group bought the rights to the footage from the production firm that had been hired by Romney’s 2008 team, “which did not entail interacting with the Romney campaign.’’
But the FEC agreed this week with the Campaign Legal Center, which argued the super PAC illegally coordinated with the campaign.
“If the ad was prepared by Romney or an agent of Romney, then this rule applies,’’ Ryan said in 2012. “The rule would be meaningless if you could transfer the legal rights from the campaign to another actor.’’
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