Comments on More on Those Suspicious Satterberg Donations

Follow the money.

Great work here - the 50K donation really stands out. If they are circumventing the campaign finance laws in an election for county AG - this really is a nasty state of affairs. Even the appearance of impropriety.....with someone who claimed to be non-partisan (uh huh)...looks reaaly bad.
We need to keep on this one - especially since it seems to have been done at the last minute after a lot of people have already voted.
GOP = POC (Party of corruption)_

Good work. I'm not convinced yet, but given the circumstantial evidence I'm glad that Sherman and the press are looking into it. An additional piece of evidence I'd like to see would be a look at the donation history of these same supporters in previous elections. Are these regular Republican donors who tend to give to the state party and trust that party officials know where the money is most needed? Or are these Satterberg supporters with no previous links to the state party? Again, that wouldn't be a smoking gun, but it would be further evidence that something's fishy.

Even so I'm not as quick as some to call smart politicking by my opponents "corruption". Even if these donors haven't given to the state party in the past, there are perfectly valid reasons for the Republicans to be funneling money into this particular campaign. If I were Satterberg and a maxed-out supporter asked me what else I could do to help, I would take a look at how many high-profile races there are right now (very few) and figure that at least a sizable fraction of any money given to the state party would make its way to my campaign. While I'm not a campaign-finance lawyer, my understanding of the rules is that Satterberg would be doing nothing wrong to urge his supporters to donate to the state based on that calculus. And the political parties obviously shouldn't be disallowed from funneling money to important races just because the donors are interested in those races. The problem arises when promises are made that money will go to a particular place; there will be circumstances where no promises are necessary for everyone to have a pretty clear idea what will happen to the money. Just because you can't conspire to make this happen doesn't mean that everyone's blind to the most likely outcome.