Beatty's candidacy raises questions

Funds received before campaign was official

Aides say Jeff Beatty acted within federal campaign laws.

Republican US Senate candidate Jeff Beatty raised almost $560,000 in 2007 by telling campaign contributors across the country that he was running against incumbent John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, but he did not publicly disclose that activity until well into this year.

The tactics employed by the Army veteran and counterterrorism expert from Harwich allowed him to wage what amounted to a stealth candidacy for almost a year.

Beatty's campaign aides said he acted within the federal election law because he was "testing the waters" in an exploratory phase of his candidacy during 2007, making him exempt from Federal Elections Commission requirements that he file quarterly financial disclosure reports.

But campaign finance specialists said that his massive fund-raising and spending stretch the use of the exploratory campaign provisions beyond the breaking point.

"To claim this operation is an exploratory committee rather than a campaign committee through the simple expedi ent of using the term 'exploratory' is akin to putting lipstick on a pig," said Paul S. Ryan, the FEC program director with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. "It's absurd."

The campaign finance law experts said language he used declaring himself a candidate in 2007 direct-mail fund-raising letters, which were mailed to 35,000 potential contributors across the country, required him to register as a candidate and make quarterly disclosures.

Beatty declined to comment for this article. In the letters, he wrote that he had "set out on the road to defeat John Kerry and replace him in the U.S. Senate." He attacked Kerry for his "far left, bash-America, anti-military rhetoric" and asked for contributors' help in "my U.S. Senate campaign."

"My campaign team is laying plans to recruit and build an army of grass-roots supporters and leaders like you to help me with this battle in 2008," said Beatty in the letter, which lists his background as a former Delta Force officer, FBI special agent, and CIA counterterrorism officer.

Beatty makes only one reference in the four-page letter to being in "an exploratory phase" and refers in another sentence that his "exploration" had drawn attention in the national media.

Kahlil Byrd, a spokesman for Beatty, dismissed the suggestion that Beatty was required to file quarterly reports in 2007. He said the campaign had carefully followed the rules for raising money during an exploratory period.

"You have to see if people will react well to your campaign," he said.

Byrd said that nearly 100 percent of the expenditures in 2007 were used to pay a Virginia-based direct mail company, Response America, and its vendors in order to create the contributor file that Beatty planned to tap during his campaign against Kerry.

"Jeff Beatty is middle-class," Byrd said. "This is the only way to challenge an incumbent like Kerry. The system is rigged for rich people and incumbents."

But Ryan and other campaign finance experts who have reviewed the language of Beatty's May 2007 fund-raising letter said that Beatty was presenting himself as a US Senate candidate and had clearly moved beyond any exploratory phase.

"He is clearly a candidate when he wrote this," said Sarah Dufendach, Common Cause national vice president for legislative affairs, who read the letter at the request of the Globe. "How more clear can you be? This isn't even a close call."

Federal campaign law requires that individuals who make statements that they are candidates, and who have spent or raised more than $5,000, must create a campaign committee and register with the Senate clerk.

The exemption for an exploratory period does not apply if potential candidates "raise more money than what is reasonably needed to test the waters or amass funds (seed money) to be used after candidacy is established," according to FEC rules.

The exemption also does not apply if potential candidates "use general public political advertising to publicize their intentions to campaign." Ryan said that Beatty's May 14 mass mailing fell under the definition of advertising.

If he had declared himself a candidate, Beatty would have been required to file three quarterly campaign finance disclosure reports covering his activities in 2007. The reports are a fundamental means of giving the public, rival campaigns, and the press a window into who is giving financial backing to candidates for public office and whether the money is being spent properly.

Initially in 2007, Beatty faced a primary fight with Jim Ogonowski, the former 2007 congressional candidate from Dracut. But in a major embarrassment for high-profile Republicans in Massachusetts and Washington who had endorsed Ogonowski and shunned Beatty, Ogonowski failed to submit the needed 10,000 voter signatures in June to appear on the GOP primary ballot.

Beatty's first disclosure of his financial activities was in April 2008, covering contributions and expenditures from March 1, 2007 until March 31, 2008 - a 13-month period. It showed Beatty raised $976,219 in 2007 and 2008, most of it in relatively small contributions from out-of-state contributors eager to unseat Kerry, whose 2004 presidential campaign has made him a favorite target of national conservative groups. Almost 90 percent of those funds - $892,895 - was spent paying for the direct-mail operation.

According to his latest report filed last week, Beatty's fund-raising total had reached $1.5 million, but he only had $47,595 in his account. Kerry's campaign committee reports having $7.5 million in its bank account.