Super PAC coordination allegations heat up Boston's mayoral showdown

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2 days ago

In an increasingly antagonistic Boston mayoral race, the two frontrunner candidates are now facing accusations of campaign finance violations on both sides.
In a letter to the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance on Tuesday, 13 officers and members of Democratic ward committees from throughout Boston asked the agency to investigate Democratic City Hall hopeful Josh Kraft's campaign to determine whether it illegally coordinated with the super PAC Your City, Your Future.
The letter followed reporting by the Boston Globe and Commonwealth Beacon this week that two companies owned by local political consultant Jonathan Karush had been hired separately by the campaign and the PAC. The letter called the connections between the two 'flagrant and extensive.'
In a response on Wednesday, Kraft's campaign sent its own letter to OCPF, accusing Mayor Michelle Wu of the exact same thing during her 2021 run for office.
They also claimed she was misusing public funds during the current race, having City Hall staff perform campaign-related tasks during business hours.
'Her actions in the face of a serious and credible challenger are unprecedented and a slap in the face to the people of Boston,' Kraft Campaign Manager Brandon Scheutz wrote.
As the Globe first reported this week, Karush built a website for the Kraft campaign as president of Liberty Concepts Inc., which he founded in 2000. At the same time, CP Campaigns, a company Karush formed in March and which shares office space with Liberty Concepts, handles digital advertising for Your City, Your Future.
'Any claim that close business associates O'Connor, Keyser, and Karush have shared no communications about Josh Kraft and his campaign is implausible,' the Democratic ward committee members wrote in their letter Tuesday.
While individual donors can only contribute a maximum of $1,000 per year to a particular political candidate, there is no limit on the amount they can give to a super PAC.
But under state law, independent expenditure political action committees, commonly known as super PACs, are forbidden from coordinating with any candidate or other non-elected political committee.
The state regulations governing contribution limits say two political committees may be considered the same if they 'make contributions to one or more of the same candidates or political committees and if ... the committees are determined to have been established, financed, maintained or controlled by the same person (or persons) or entity (or entities).'
The examples listed as evidence that two entities are the same include shared personnel and office space, though this does not automatically mean that they would legally be considered the same.
Keyser Public Strategies, the firm advising Kraft's campaign, lists Karush as a member of its team on its website, though the firm told the Globe that he is not an employee.
Karush told the Globe that though he is the principal owner of CP Campaigns, he had not personally performed any work for the super PAC, and there is a 'firewall' between that work and what he does for the Kraft campaign, which a campaign spokesperson also confirmed to the newspaper.
'I personally have no contact with the PAC in accordance with the firewall ensuring there is no coordination,' Karush told the Globe.
Neither Karush nor Your City, Your Future immediately responded to requests for comment Wednesday morning. Rebecca St. Amand, the super PAC's chair, told Commonwealth Beacon that they had had 'no dealings with Jonathan Karush.'
According to OCPF records, Your City, Your Future has paid $425,000 to CP Campaigns since April. The PAC has spent more than $2.4 million on advertising since its formation, much of it on negative ads targeted at Wu.
The PAC has taken in major donations from New Balance Chairman Jim Davis and Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin, who each gave $1 million to support Kraft's campaign. Rubin and a number of other donors to the PAC are associates of the candidate's father, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Read more: Out-of-town money floods Boston mayor's race
The Democratic ward committee members also took issue with Robert Kraft's campaign activities in their Tuesday letter, writing that the football team owner had seemingly solicited donations to both the campaign and the PAC.
'This race is unlike any we've seen in Boston's long history. More outside money—from Trump supporters and out-of-state billionaires—has already been raised and spent to attack Mayor Wu and support Josh Kraft than in any other mayoral campaign," they wrote. 'This unprecedented flood of coordinated money threatens our state's strong track record and demands action.'
Josh Kraft has previously acknowledged his father's likely requests for funds from friends, saying during an appearance on GBH's Boston Public Radio last month, 'He's a dad, right? ... I mean, I'd do that for my kid.'
In his letter Wednesday, Scheutz, Kraft's campaign manager, claimed that the campaign had 'received numerous reports' of city staff pitching campaign stories to the media and responding to campaign-related inquiries, collecting signatures to qualify the mayor for the ballot, drafting remarks for her April campaign launch, appearing at political events and 'calling non-profit leaders, community leaders, and business leaders ... to demand they support Mayor Wu's campaign and avoid appearing with, or meeting with Josh Kraft, and threatening to pull city grant funding if they don't comply.'
As evidence, he compared the size of Wu's campaign team—OCPF filings show just two employees and no campaign office—to that of Kraft, who has a campaign headquarters in Nubian Square and 29 paid staff and consultants.
Scheutz also claimed that Wu and her senior staff use secure messaging apps like Signal to communicate, 'for the sole reason that the messages are deleted regularly and can't be disclosed as part of public records requests.'
In addition, Scheutz wrote that in 2021, a pro-Wu super PAC, Boston Turnout Project, hired Sharon Durkan, now a City Councilor, who had previously worked as a fundraising consultant for the Wu campaign.
'Without question, Ms. Durkan would have been in possession of proprietary and non-public information that she had gained from the Wu Committee as to the identities and giving proclivities of and contact information for, the most well-heeled financial supporters of Wu,' he wrote, suggesting that this constituted coordination between the campaign and the super PAC.
Scheutz did not address the allegations against the Kraft campaign in his letter.
The Wu campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday morning, but in a fundraising email sent to supporters Tuesday evening, they alluded to Your City, Your Future's activities, referring to the group as a 'dark-money Super PAC.'
'Kraft and his family connections are attempting to buy this race – but Boston is not for sale," they wrote.
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