Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tim Pawlenty agreed Monday that his campaign will pay a $100,000 fine in connection with two television ads that a state campaign finance board ruled the Minnesota Republican Party had illegally prepared and broadcast on his behalf.
Pawlenty also will have to count $500,000 of the cost of the ads against his $2.2 million campaign spending limit, reducing the amount he can spend for advertising, salaries and other costs during the final three weeks of the contest for governor.
The fine and the amount to be counted against his spending limit were negotiated between the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board and Pawlenty and his lawyer over the weekend and in an eight-hour closed meeting Monday.
“We’re satisfied with the result, and it’s a fair compromise,” Pawlenty said. On Friday he said that although he disagreed with the board’s ruling, he took responsibility for the actions of a media consultant employed by his campaign.
The party agreed to pay $4,000 in fines.
Doug Kelley, a former federal prosecutor who is the board’s chairman, acknowledged that the $100,000 fine against Pawlenty was substantially less than he had predicted Thursday when the board ruled the television ads violated limits on contributions by a political party to its candidate.
A substantially larger fine, Kelley said, might have forced Pawlenty to abandon his campaign for governor.
“That was not acceptable to the board because that would be shutting down a viable campaign for governor,” Kelley said. “The fine is a compromise number.”
Kelley said board members gave Pawlenty credit for taking responsibility for the ads.
“People believed that Tim Pawlenty had got it, and learned his lesson,” he said.
The negotiated settlement calls for both Pawlenty and the Republican Party not to appeal the board’s ruling. The settlement does not require Pawlenty to admit his campaign broke any laws.
Spokesmen for Pawlenty’s two main rivals said the board’s ruling will affect the campaign.
“Mr. Pawlenty violated the law,” said Bill Harper, campaign manager for Roger Moe, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate. “He has been punished. This will be factored in by the voters.”
Jack Uldrich, campaign manager for Independence Party candidate Tim Penny, said of Pawlenty, “He and his campaign broke the law, and now they’re paying the price.”
The board’s ruling against Pawlenty stemmed from a distinction in state law between two kinds of expenditures routinely made by political parties on behalf of their candidates:
— Parties face a $20,000 limit on the amount they can give to a candidate or directly spend on his or her behalf.
— Parties have no limit on so-called “independent expenditures” they make for a candidate without the candidate’s input.
The board said it found probable cause to believe the two television ads, which were labeled as an independent expenditure by the party, were not really independent — that a campaign media consultant and a consultant for the party illegally worked together to produce and broadcast them to promote Pawlenty’s candidacy with the party’s money.
On Friday, Pawlenty fired Pat McCarthy, his Washington-based media consultant.
Last week, Kelley estimated the party spent $800,000 to $1 million on the ads, and he speculated the board would assess a fine of at least that amount to ensure Pawlenty did not receive any financial benefit from the party’s illegal spending.
On Monday, Kelley said the board concluded the actual cost of the two ads was about $600,000.
Although the $100,000 fine was far less than he speculated last week, Kelley said it was high enough to deter other candidates from trying to skirt contribution limits.
“If there are any more political operatives out there thinking they can do the wink-and-nod kind of thing, they will think twice about it,” Kelley said. “We think this is a substantial penalty. It’s an unprecedented penalty.”
Pawlenty, who temporarily halted the airing of all television ads following the board’s ruling, refused to say Monday how much money his campaign will be able to spend during the remainder of the campaign. Based on previous statements by his campaign spokesman, it appears he could still spend about $700,000 if he can raise that much.
