McCain gives money back to PAC

By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff

During its cash-starved days before the New Hampshire primary, John McCain's presidential campaign got some help from a political action committee set up to help congressional candidates who would fight wasteful spending in Washington.

But the Porkbuster PAC set up by US Representative Jeff Flake violated federal contribution limits and, by its own account, wasted $2,100 to rent Granite State hotel rooms that were never used.

In response to inquiries by the Globe, PAC treasurer Steve Voeller said the excess in-kind contributions were an oversight and notified the McCain campaign, which said it wrote a $1,896.52 check to reimburse the committee for the excess contribution.

Flake, an Arizona Republican, set up the PAC last year, but the campaign of fellow Arizonan McCain is the only beneficiary so far. In reports covering last November and January, the campaign reported in-kind donations of airfare and lodging costs of about $4,200. The expenses were incurred by Flake and aides who campaigned in New Hampshire for McCain, Voeller said. Under federal law, the PAC has a $2,300 limit on in-kind contributions to a candidate.

Presidential campaigns routinely pay the expenses of their surrogates out of their own funds but McCain's campaign was all but broke at the time and surviving on a line of credit.

Porkbuster PAC apparently intended to spend even more on behalf of McCain, however. Last Jan. 10, two days after the primary, the PAC reported paying $2,161 in "lodging expenses not utilized" at a hotel in a Manchester, N.H. suburb. Voeller, in an e-mail said: "The $2,161 should not be listed as an in-kind, since nobody stayed in those rooms and the PAC had to eat the charge (lesson learned about buying over the Internet). We checked with the (Federal Election Commission) on that one."

Because of high demand for rooms before the primary, the hotel required a minimum stay of more than one day, but Flake and two staffers did not use the rooms, Voeller said.