Possibly you may remember the Northern Pass story from last year: in a nutshell, Maggie Hassan’s campaign took forty-five thousand in illegally same-day campaign contributions from three Big Labor unions (SEIU, UFCW, and IBEW). This was generally considered to be at least suspicious, as all three unions want New Hampshire’s proposed Northern Pass transmission line project to go through, while radical environmentalists of course instead want people in New Hampshire to be cold, hungry, and in the dark. Was it a bribe? Nobody knows! Was it illegal? Well…
After the state Republican Party filed a complaint, Attorney General Joe Foster was tasked with deciding whether the $45,000 in union donations to Hassan’s campaign were legal. He decided that a person becomes a candidate at midnight on the day he or she announces. Under that rather creative interpretation, the two $10,000 donations were legal, but the $25,000 contribution was not.
Further complicating the story, the PACs had not registered in New Hampshire, making their donations felonies. Foster ordered the PACs to register, but did not punish them for the violations, which was very lenient of him.