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Friends of Traditional Banking, a SuperPAC created by a group of state associations last spring, has narrowed its sights to seven races — and is hoping more community banks will join it as it decides what two candidates it should support.
August 22 -
Frustrated by a lack of political power and fed up with blindly donating to politicians who consistently vote against the industry's interests, a handful of leaders have formed the industry's first SuperPAC.
April 4
WASHINGTON — The American Bankers Association's board is expected to approve a plan Thursday to get into the SuperPAC game.
The proposal, which is up for a vote by the board, would authorize the ABA to establish a separate nonprofit board that would solicit corporate donations from banks and then funnel money to tight congressional races.
It would be a reversal of sorts for the industry's largest trade group because the ABA chose not to support Friends of Traditional Banking, a SuperPAC organized in the spring by a dozen of ABA's state affiliates.
When Friends of Traditional Banking was getting off the ground, ABA staff said the national group was
But in the last few weeks — about the time Friends of Traditional Banking
Rather than a SuperPAC per se, which operate without any spending restrictions, the ABA staff recommended creating what's known as a 501(c)(4) organization. These groups fall somewhere between a traditional PAC and a SuperPAC in terms of raising and spending money.
While they may collect corporate dollars, only 49% of the total may be spent to support political candidates. The rest must go toward issue advocacy such as buying advertisements to support a particular policy position.
"Anything that we raise has to be divided in two and half has to be set aside," Mike Hunter, the ABA's chief operating officer, said in an interview Wednesday. "I look at it as a build-out that the ABA needed. As I do a scan around town, as far as I know, this is one of the only significant trade associations that doesn't have this capability…to do soft-money things."
Asked why the ABA waited until just a couple months before election day to take this step, Hunter said: "There is always a challenge when you are evolving an organization that is being asked to do something that they have never done before. So I would say there was a learning curve here and a comfort level that we had to achieve."
But in the end, this is about giving "our members as many opportunities as they can to impact elections," he said.
If ABA's 5,000 members all gave at the recommended levels, Hunter said the new nonprofit could raise $6 million within a month. The recommended levels are:
$10,000 for banks with assets over $11 billion; $5,000 for banks with $620 million to $11 billion; and $1,000 for banks under $620 million.
"I think we can raise a fair amount of money," Hunter said.
If half of the membership jumps on board, that's $3 million. But only half of that total could be funneled to candidates because of the spending restrictions these C-4 organizations face.
"This is a complement to BankPAC. It's a complement to Friends of Traditional Banking. Their fundraising focus is different, both in terms of giving directly to candidate committees as well as being limited to accepting personal contributions. This gives banks, through a C-4, to give corporately and to do independent expenditures," Hunter said.
