Tuesday, December 10, 2013

McConnell's Growing Ties to Rand Paul: Trouble Brewing?

by Russ Choma

There's increasingly little daylight between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his fellow Kentucky Republican, Sen. Rand Paul: Campaign expenditure reports show the top Republican has been paying another consultant closely linked to Paul.

According to reports filed by McConnell's campaign, Elizabeth Stafford has been paid a total of $30,000 so far this year for fundraising consulting. Stafford is the wife of Doug Stafford, the executive director of Reinventing A New Direction PAC (RAND PAC), Paul's leadership PAC. The only other payments made by a federal campaign or political committee to Elizabeth Stafford were two checks from RAND PAC totaling $5,500.

McConnell's campaign manager is Jesse Benton, who managed Paul's 2010 Senate campaign and is married to the granddaughter of former presidential candidate and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). If Benton was hired in part to help fend off a primary challenge from the right, as many observers said, it didn't work; the senior senator is now fighting a tea party insurgent as well as a credible Democratic candidate. Earlier this month, we wrote that McConnell's campaign also paid a political operative named Dimitri Kesari, a top Ron Paul aide. 

But McConnell's proliferating ties to the Paul family also bring him closer to individuals who have been accused by a former colleague of violating Iowa campaign finance law and misleading the IRS -- as well as being involved in negotiations to pay an Iowa state senator for his support in Iowa straw polls in 2011.


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