Matt Dolan Breaks Pledge to Financially Support GOP Candidates Through PAC, Instead Uses It to Funnel Cash to Campaign Consultants
September 7, 2023
Details on Dolan’s “public relations gimmick” follows reporting that Dolan is using a “cheap loan” to bankroll his Senate campaign
Columbus, OH – A new report from the Columbus Dispatch revealed that Matt Dolan is using the leadership PAC he created to financially support GOP candidates to funnel cash to his own campaign consultants instead. In fact, “more than one year after its launch, Ohio Matters has spent more money on Dolan’s campaign consultants than candidates.”
Details on Dolan’s “public relations gimmick” follow reports that Dolan is using a “cheap loan” with a too-good-to-be-true interest rate to bankroll his Senate campaign.
Political Scientist David Cohen said, “The fact that [Dolan’s] contributed nothing leads me to believe that the PAC was nothing [more] than a public relations gimmick.”
Read more:
Columbus Dispatch: This 2024 Ohio Senate candidate pledged to help GOP with a new PAC. Did he deliver?
Haley BeMiller
September 7, 2023
- After he lost Ohio’s 2022 U.S. Senate primary, state Sen. Matt Dolan pledged to put his money where his mouth is.
- But more than one year after its launch, Ohio Matters has spent more money on Dolan’s campaign consultants than candidates. And Dolan, who’s part of the wealthy family that owns the Cleveland Guardians, never made the personal contribution he promised when the PAC kicked off.
- The findings come after one of Dolan’s primary opponents, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, criticized him for not doing enough to support Issue 1, the failed effort to make it harder to amend Ohio’s constitution.
- “The fact that he’s contributed nothing leads me to believe that the PAC was nothing [more] than a public relations gimmick,” said David Cohen, a political scientist at the University of Akron.
- Dolan said he would invest an undetermined amount of his own money, but that never happened, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
- Ohio Matters also gave $2,000 to the Ohio Republican Party and $2,500 to the Ohio Young Republican PAC. At the same time, it’s paid $29,000 to political firms run by Dolan’s campaign manager and top political adviser. The consultants helped advise and manage the PAC between Dolan’s Senate bids.
- Cohen said PACs need to raise millions of dollars and either get behind one key race or several candidates to be influential. Anything short of that isn’t serving much of a purpose, he argued. “It just seems to be languishing,” Cohen said.
Cleveland.com: How a multimillionaire U.S. Senate candidate financed his race with a cheap loan
Jake Zuckerman
August 22, 2023
- Financial disclosure statements show Dolan – a scion of a family that owns the Cleveland Guardians who’s worth somewhere between $14.5 and $41 million – took out a line of credit in 2021 with the financial services giant for between $5 million and $25 million.
- The Morgan Stanley financing speaks to some of the financial gateways available to wealthy politicians but closed to most the constituents they represent. However, even in terms of a U.S. Senate crammed with millionaires, Dolan’s financial arrangement sticks out.
- The loan Dolan took out seems to follow the “buy, borrow, die” tax avoidance strategy, according to Edward McCaffery, a tax law professor at the University of Southern California who’s said to have coined the phrase. The idea is that wealthy Americans can limit their tax liabilities by accumulating assets like stocks that appreciate in value without producing taxable income; borrowing money against those assets; and passing the assets on in death to their heirs.
- “It’s good to be rich,” McCaffery said.
- “If you’re not super wealthy, a bank is not going to give you a personal loan to fund a political campaign,” [Bob Salera] said.
Cleveland.com: LTE: Matt Dolan’s sweetheart campaign loan tells us everything we need to know about his approach to public office
Rick Bohan, Akron
September 2, 2023
- It seems he got his buddies at Morgan Stanley bank, which holds over $1 trillion in assets, to provide him with a line of credit worth millions of dollars at the ultra-low interest rate of 0.832%. Meanwhile, the rest of us who aren’t making such loan deals at the country club with our bankers are paying almost 10% on our home loans and around 20% on our credit cards.
- Matt will try to tell us that he understands our problems and will represent our interests in Washington. The only thing we can be sure of is that he’ll side with his wealthy cronies who are bankrolling his campaign.
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