MD 1st Dist: Harris Has Solid Supporter in MD Concrete Czar
By Lou Peck
Contributing Editor, Cecil Times and CongressDaily
New filings with the Federal Election Commission have shed some light on who’s behind “Concerned Taxpayers of America” – a recently formed political action committee that, as of Friday, reported spending nearly $150,000 on “independent expenditure” ads opposing the re-election of Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil in Maryland’s 1st District.
According to the filings, there are only two contributors behind the Concerned Taxpayers group, and they’re both taxpayers in the higher income brackets. As of Sept. 30, the two had given $500,000 to the group, with $300,000 coming from Daniel G. Schuster Inc., an Owings Mills, Md.-based concrete construction firm with major projects through Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. (The other $200,000 was from Robert Mercer, a New York hedge fund executive.)
On Sept. 20, Daniel G. Schuster Inc. made a $150,000 donation to Concerned Taxpayers that was designated for “MD-01 Independent Expenditure” in the FEC filing. That almost precisely matches the $149,606 the group has spent so far on ads targeting Kratovil in his contest against Republican Andy Harris. In a separate filing with the FEC, Concerned Taxpayers reported Friday that it was spending another $64,447 on anti-Kratovil advertising, on top of $85,159 previously spent for that purpose.
When the Concerned Taxpayers group first surfaced at the end of September with ads in the 1st District race, a spokesman for the Harris campaign said the candidate had no knowledge of the activities of the group. Federal election law bars independent expenditure groups from coordinating their activities with the campaign committees of individual candidates.
But Daniel Schuster himself is hardly an unfamiliar figure to the Harris campaign: According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, Schuster and his family is the biggest direct donor to Harris campaign committee this year.
FEC records show Schuster himself has given $4,800 to the Harris campaign this year, the maximum allowed by federal law. Members of his immediate family have given similar amounts, for a total of at least $19,200 going directly to the Harris campaign committee from Schuster and relatives.
There is nothing illegal in what Schuster and his company is doing: A recent Supreme Court ruling greatly enhanced the ability of corporations as well as labor unions to direct unlimited amounts of money into political campaigns. But critics have complained that the high court ruling, combined with other recent court decisions, have undermined legislative efforts to control the influence of money in elections as well as making the source of such money less transparent.
Harris is not the only Maryland candidate this year benefiting from Schuster’s largesse. Another $150,000 donation to Concerned Taxpayers of America, made on Sept. 30 by the Schuster firm, was targeted for non-federal races in the FEC filing.
As of the end of last month, $36,230 of that amount had gone to advertising designed to boost Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert Ehrlich, with another $20,225 aimed at the hotly contested race for Baltimore County executive.
