PAC set up with help from Paulette Jordan’s campaign got 1 donation, has spent $0

A federal political action committee created in July with the help of an Idaho gubernatorial candidate’s campaign had received one contribution and spent no money as of September, a new report shows. The tribe that gave the contribution also says it is no longer involved with the PAC.

Strength and Progress, a “super PAC” created to support national tribal issues, received $25,000 from the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, according to its quarterly report posted to the Federal Election Commission’s website Monday. The reporting period covered July through September.

Attorney Nate Kelly is now the campaign manager for Democrat Paulette Jordan, a Coeur d’Alene Tribe member. Earlier this year, when Kelly was in a different role with the campaign, he helped set up the super PAC and facilitate the tribe’s donation — the result, he said, of conversations with the tribe about how it could do more to help Jordan and other Native American candidates.

“I helped them basically understand PAC law,” Kelly told the Statesman in an interview Thursday. “... I wrote an opinion that said Paulette can’t use any money given by the tribe above $5,000 for her campaign, but can assist in this.”

Kelly said a friend of his, Michael Davis, a California accountant, “took the lead on it.”

“I helped him set up this company, Strength and Progress,” Kelly said. “By helping him set up, I mean told him of where he could file the entity. I told him he should file it outside the state to make clear that the money wasn’t being spent in the state. The whole purpose of that was because I was concerned that there would be an accusation if Paulette was running a federal PAC, that there was some sort of impropriety even though Paulette, of course, can get paid by the Coeur d’Alene Tribe and they can support the campaign in unlimited amounts, they just cannot do it through us. So they contributed $25,000.”

Strength and Progress LLC was registered in Wyoming, while the address given for the PAC’s FEC registration is a P.O. Box Davis maintains in California.

“At the time the idea was, and still is ... to help Deb Haaland, Sharise Davids and other Native American federal candidates get over the hump,” Kelly said. Haaland, from New Mexico, and Davids, from Kansas, are running for Congress this fall.

“Strength and Progress is a side issue, a federal issue, which was me attempting to segregate an issue that is not related to Idaho into a separate basket so that they could focus on Idaho and focus on Rep. Jordan independent of us.”

A federal super PAC can raise unlimited amounts of money. Those funds can only be spent on independent expenditures — not in partnership with a campaign.

The tribe apparently will not guide the PAC’s future spending. “The Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s involvement with that PAC was strictly limited to the one-time contribution,” said Tyrel Stevenson, the tribe’s government affairs director.

Kelly said Davis is overseeing how the PAC spends its money.

Kelly said all parties involved have followed campaign finance rules closely, and neither he, Jordan nor the campaign have done anything improper or illegal regarding the PAC.