Jim Bognet’s congressional campaign is very much a family affair. It’s based at the offices of his father’s contracting business in Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, about 25 miles south of Wilkes-Barre. He tapped his cousin early on to be the campaign’s finance chairman.
And now that same cousin, along with Bognet’s father and another family member, have helped finance a super PAC spending on his behalf.
A public-affairs consultant and former Trump administration appointee, Bognet is vying for the Republican nomination in Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District. He is one of a number of congressional candidates getting support from super PACs funded by those candidates’ family members. PAY DIRT found a handful of other House candidates competing in tight primary contests over the next two weeks who have also leaned on super PACs funded largely or entirely by direct family members.
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That in itself is not legally problematic. Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited sums of money by virtue of their ostensible independence from the candidates they support, with which they’re barred from coordinating. But that prohibition largely covers the ways in which they spend money. There are restrictions on fundraising as well, but candidates and their campaigns are generally permitted to solicit contributions of up to $5,000 for supportive super PACs and to promote them in general terms without running afoul of those coordination rules.
“These family-funded super PACs may not have violated the law, since current coordination rules largely focus on coordinated campaign spending, rather than coordinated fundraising,” said Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reforms at the Campaign Legal Center. “But these family-funded super PACs are a symptom of a broken campaign-finance system.”
“Super PACs are only allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts if they are independent of the candidates they support,” Fischer said. “A super PAC funded by a candidate’s family is hardly independent.”
In Bognet’s case, the super PAC at issue is a group called Keep PA Great, which has spent a little more than $23,000 on direct mail and text messaging supporting his campaign and going after two of his primary opponents. Keep PA Great has raised $105,000 so far this cycle. Its largest donor is Michael Goller, a New York biopharmaceutical investor who has chipped in $60,000 to the group.
The rest of Keep PA Great’s money has come from Bognet’s family. His father, James M. Bognet, donated $10,000 last month. Another $10,000 came from George Hayden, Bognet’s cousin, whom he tapped early on in the cycle to be the chairman of the campaign’s finance committee.
In April, the super PAC got $25,000 from a Virginia-based company called Bognet Construction Associates. That company is run by James R. Bognet, another of the candidate’s cousins. They also appear to do business together: Jim Bognet’s financial-disclosure form lists a 3 percent stake in a real-estate investment fund with headquarters at the same address as Bognet Construction Associates, and run by the company’s CFO.
“While we can’t and don’t coordinate with outside groups,” a Bognet campaign spokesperson said in an emailed statement, “Jim is proud to have broad support, including from Keep PA Great, and to be added to the National Republican Congressional Committee’s Young Guns program of strong Republican candidates.”
“To beat Nancy Pelosi’s Lap Dog Matt Cartwright [the district’s Democratic incumbent] and the millions in liberal special interest money, including the $1.4 million dollars funneled through Nancy Pelosi’s House Majority PAC for attack ads on the GOP nominee this fall, we will need all the support we can get to turn NEPA red again,” the spokesperson added.
Political candidates are free to donate as much money as they want to their own political campaigns. But family members must abide by the same donation limits as everyone else, which in the 2020 election cycle means they can give as much as $5,600 total to support a candidate’s primary and general-election campaigns.
But there are additional avenues for relatives who want to help a family member’s political campaign, and the Bognets have stepped up in other ways. When the campaign launched, it operated out of the lunch room at the family contracting business, Bognet Inc., according to a January 2020 interview with the candidate. It remains based there, according to the address on its website, and the campaign has paid Bognet’s parents a total of $450 in rent over the three-plus months since launching.
Bognet is a seasoned political operative in his own right. He was the chief executive of Sen. Martha McSally’s (R-AZ) failed 2018 campaign before being tapped for a senior post at the U.S. Export-Import Bank. He currently runs a political and public-affairs consulting firm. That means that he’s likely familiar with the rules governing super PAC coordination and has taken care to stay on the right side of those rules, even as his family helps bankroll a PAC supporting his own campaign.
Other candidates who PAY DIRT contacted about their own family-funded super PACs insisted that nothing in those flows of money ran afoul of coordination rules.
“Our campaign has not and would not coordinate with any outside group as that is illegal,” emailed John Barge, a candidate for the Republican nomination in Georgia’s 14th District.
Barge enjoys the backing of a super PAC called Made in America PAC, which says it “is dedicated to electing strong, conservative leaders around the country who support American values and will help President Donald Trump keep America great.” In fact, it’s only ever worked to elect one such candidate: Barge.
The group has done so using money provided entirely by Barge’s brother, according to FEC records. Made in America PAC was formed on Jan. 31, a day after Barge officially declared his congressional candidacy. By the time it launched, the PAC had already received its only reported income to date: a $250,000 contribution from Charles “Alan” Barge.
Made in America PAC has used that money to mount direct-mail and digital ad campaigns in support of Barge’s primary candidacy. “Conservative John Barge will NEVER cower in his religious beliefs and will stand with President Trump to fight the socialist agenda of the left,” one such ad promises.
Other family-funded super PACs are less focused on a single candidate but have nonetheless provided opportunities for huge financial boosts from the candidates’ immediate relatives.
Jared Vander Dussen, a candidate in the Republican primary in New Mexico’s 1st Congressional District, is just one of three contenders who has received independent support from a super PAC called the Hardworking Americans Committee. The PAC has paid about $45,000 to produce and air ads supporting Vander Dussen’s candidacy.
All of those expenditures came after the candidate’s mother, Jenise Vander Dussen, wrote the group a $100,000 check in April. She and her husband own Rajen Dairy, one of the largest dairy farms in the Southwest. Vander Dussen’s campaign did not respond to questions about the donation.
Family funding for supportive super PACs is not a new phenomenon. It’s been going on since at least 2012, the second election cycle after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision upended campaign-finance regulations. On the one hand, super PACs are simply ways for people who support a candidate to do so, and few are more likely to offer such support than a candidate’s relatives. As long as they don’t do so at the behest of the candidate, it’s not illegal.
But for campaign-finance watchdogs such as Fischer, the issue raises fundamental questions of fairness in the political process. The problems are most pronounced in cases such as that of Sara Jacobs, the Democratic congressional candidate in California whose grandparents, the billionaire founders of microchip giant Qualcomm, dumped seven-figure sums into a super PAC supporting her candidacy.
“A person shouldn’t have to come from a family of millionaires or billionaires to mount a viable campaign for office,” Fischer said.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Jim Bognet's father had loaned his campaign $12,500. It was a loan from the candidate himself, not from his father.
