Dem Mark Green "Welcomes" Pirro To The AG Race
NY AG candidate Mark Green today "welcomed" Jeanine Pirro (R) to the race by telling her she's violating FEC regs. His letter to Pirro is after the jump.
[CORRECTED: A previous version of this post said "New York State Campaign Finance Laws."]
Dear Jeanine:
Welcome to the Attorney General race. Since we will be running to be the chief law enforcement officer of the state, I wanted to let you know that you are currently violating federal election regulations by continuing to solicit and accept funds for your abandoned 2006 Senate campaign. As of 2:00 pm today, you are continuing to solicit and accept funds for "PIRRO 2006 for U.S. Senate" on your web site, http://www.jeaninepirro.com/.
According to the Federal Election Commission, Federal regulations prohibit a candidate who has withdrawn from a race from soliciting or accepting funds for that race (except for debt reduction). FEC staff has advised us that this conduct runs afoul of regulations that can be found, among other places, in 11 CFR 110.1(B), 11 CFR 110.16, and several advisory opinions, including 1986-12.
Should we end up as the respective nominees of our parties, I look forward to debating you on the serious issues that New Yorkers want their Attorney General to address over the next four years and beyond.
Sincerely,
Mark Green
I predict Mark Green wins the AG race in a landslide.
go get em Mark !! why on earth would a hopeful candidate for the highest judicial post of the great state of new york begin her campaign by ignoring the law and publicize it on her website to boot...
certainly she has disqualified herself..
Her campaign staff made a mistake. Duh! The federal election laws are very convoluted; it's easy to make a mistake. I certainly don't think she willfully ignored federal law.
Mike: i agree, but come on -- a candidiate for State AG should not even NEGLIGENTLY break the law. This is the person who's trying to say she's on the ball enough to be the next Spitzer? Kudos for Mark.
Mike: An AG candidiate, running to be the top lawyer of a state, has to have the legal skills to avoid negligently breaking the law also if she wants to convince anyone she's qualified for that esteemed office. I'd say the exchange goes to Mark hands down.
She does run a sloppy race, doesn't she? These small missteps (losing a page of her speech, forgetting to change her web site immediately after she dropped out of the Senate race) are the stuff campaign journalists jump on because the readership has been trained to ignore substantive discussion of the issues and only focus on scandals and personality-driven reporting.
Pretty pathetic, but that's the way it works in New York, and Pirro doesn't seem to get it. She (and especially her staff) really need to step up their game.
Two votes in this upstate NY house for Mark. Looks like some major Albany changes coming coming '06.