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In a recent edition of the Albert Lea Tribune, Mr. Brad Kramer wrote his opinions regarding the upcoming U.S. Congressional District 1 election. In particular, Mr. Kramer took aim at the current scale of campaign donations that pour into American elections nationwide each year. It sounds like Mr. Kramer might agree with me that campaign finance reform is needed in our country. Although it is true that one eligible voter gets one vote in America, the current policies for campaign contributions allow for wealthy individuals, corporations and large political action committees (PACs) to direct massive sums of money to political parties and individual campaigns. Does this seem like a level playing field? On the idea of campaign finance reform, I believe Mr. Kramer and I have some common ground.

Where my opinion differs, however, is where Mr. Kramer blurs the lines between political parties and individual candidates. I admit it is much easier for busy Americans to learn about general priorities of political parties instead of specifics of each of the dozens of candidates on the ballot each year. However, lumping all candidates of a party together just leads to a battle of the parties and can lead to inaccurate assumptions about individual candidates. Mr. Kramer blurred the lines between political parties and the individual candidate, Ms. Bohman. He asserted that “Bohman … is likely to be financed by ultra-wealthy donors.” However, thanks to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), everyone can see who contributed how much to each candidate.

The FEC reports are publicly available and released after each quarter. This way, Mr. Kramer and the voters of southern Minnesota do not need to guess about who is funding (and potentially biasing) their candidates. For the convenience of the reader, I can summarize some of what can be found in the quarter 1 2024 FEC reports. First, Rep. Finstad received over 38% of his total donations from political action committees (PACs), and no more than 53% of his donations were from Minnesota (assuming every individual donation he received via WinRed was from a Minnesotan). So far in 2024, Rep. Finstad has accepted large donations from a sugar PAC based in North Dakota, a sugar PAC based in Michigan, a union PAC based in Maryland, a corporate food processing PAC based in Illinois, $6,100 from the CFO of the MGM Resort in Las Vegas, $9,000 from a Crop Insurance PAC based in Washington DC, plus donations from the John Deere, Tyson Foods, Koch Industries, Syngenta Global, Rolls-Royce, Boeing, Toyota Motors, Mondelez International and Kraft Heinz. In contrast, Ms. Bohman received the vast majority of her donations from small individual donations right here in southern Minnesota. Ms. Bohman’s campaign received 99% of her donations from Minnesotans (assuming all donations she received via ActBlue were from a Minnesotan), 75% of her donations were from within southern Minnesota, and only 2% of her total donations came from PACs or corporations.

Thank you.

Kelli Tiegs
Albert Lea