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Rep. Jasmine Crockett,<\/span> a Democrat running for Senate in Texas, wants people to know she isn\u2019t taking corporate PAC money \u2014 in her Senate campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn this Senate race I have not taken any corporate PAC money,\u201d Crockett told<\/a> the Texas journalist Tashara Parker last month. \u201cPeople don\u2019t know that because my report hasn\u2019t come out yet. But they will.\u201d<\/p>\n But according to her most recent campaign filings<\/a>, Crockett has a loophole that lets her use corporate PAC money to help fuel her Senate run \u2014 by transferring it from her House campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n Crockett\u2019s latest filings with the Federal Election Commission show that she transferred at least $26,500 in donations from corporate PACs\u00a0\u2014 including those representing CVS, Home Depot, AT&T, and Wells Fargo \u2014 from her House campaign to her Senate campaign on December 19.<\/p>\n \u201cIt relies on technicality that you can say \u2018I\u2019m not accepting contributions to my Senate campaign from corporate PACs,\u2019\u201d said Brendan Glavin, director of insights at the government transparency group OpenSecrets. \u201cBut they can\u2019t say that there\u2019s no corporate money flowing through her Senate campaign, because it\u2019s obviously not true.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Throughout her time in office, Crockett\u2019s stance on corporate PAC money has shifted. She was the beneficiary of millions of dollars in spending by cryptocurrency PACs in her 2022 congressional campaign, and she\u2019s taken more than $315,000 from corporate PACs affiliated with the crypto, defense, insurance, pharmaceutical, and banking industries since 2023. She\u2019s sworn off that cash<\/a> while running against state Rep. James Talarico in Texas\u2019s Democratic Senate primary, now less than three weeks away, in a cycle that\u2019s being largely defined<\/a> by battles over outside spending<\/a>. Early voting in the race begins on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cAs I understand it, it looks like Rep. Crockett didn\u2019t have a hard and fast personal policy about rejecting corporate PAC money for her House campaigns. Now, as she runs for Senate, she\u2019s drawing a different line,\u201d said Michael Beckel, director of money in politics reform at Issue One, a nonprofit that works on campaign finance reform.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cEven if they\u2019ve benefited from dark money or corporate PAC money in the past, lawmakers who stand up to a broken campaign finance system should be cheered,\u201d Beckel said. \u201cThat said, if politicians say they are taking steps to fight the broken campaign finance system, voters want them to walk the walk.\u201d<\/p>\n Crockett\u2019s campaign did not provide a comment by time of publication.<\/p>\n Speaking to Parker, Crockett suggested that questions about her corporate PAC support<\/a> that have been raised since she launched her Senate campaign were a distraction from the party\u2019s goal to elect a Democratic senator from Texas. Crockett also criticized her opponent, Talarico, who has also said he\u2019s rejecting corporate PAC money but whose last campaign was largely funded<\/a> by a casino PAC bankrolled by Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson.<\/p>\n \u201cIf politicians say they are taking steps to fight the broken campaign finance system, voters want them to walk the walk.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, taking money on behalf of a corporation is taking money on behalf of a corporation, no matter whose name is on it,\u201d Crockett said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Both Crockett<\/a> and Talarico<\/a> also have super PACs working on their behalf.<\/p>\n Crockett\u2019s House campaign received the corporate PAC contributions in question between March and November and cashed several of the checks months after they were received, four of them after she launched her Senate campaign on December 8. (FEC rules require<\/a> committees to cash any checks within ten days of their receipt.) Crockett then transferred all of the corporate PAC contributions in question to her Senate campaign on December 19.\u00a0<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the FEC said the agency could not comment on the activities of specific candidates.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not unusual for some time to pass between when a campaign donor mails a check or makes an electronic transfer and when a committee marks that money as received, Glavin said. \u201cBut when we\u2019re talking about months, that\u2019s different.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n According to Beckel, \u201cThere are frequently disparities between when a corporate PAC reports issuing a check and when a candidate reports cashing it, but lengthy disparities raise questions.\u201d He pointed to recent reporting indicating that Crockett has not named a campaign manager<\/a>, and said \u201cthe delayed deposits of campaign contributions raise questions about who she has hired to do her campaign finance compliance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n When she first<\/span> ran for the Texas State House in 2020, Crockett campaigned<\/a> hard against corporate PAC money. In a Twitter post four days before her Democratic primary that July, Crockett hit her opponent for being funded by corporate PACs and special interests, noting that she had taken zero dollars from either.\u00a0<\/p>\n That was no longer true by the following month. Crockett\u2019s state campaign started accepting corporate PAC money after she won her primary and advanced to the general election, where she ran unopposed. She took $11,500 from corporate PACs and companies throughout that campaign, including PACs for AT&T, Atmos Energy, Centene, and Comcast.\u00a0<\/p>\n By the time she ran for Congress in 2022, Crockett was the beneficiary of the second largest amount spent<\/a> by special interest groups on House candidates that cycle, Axios reported. The bulk of the funding came in the form of more than $2.7 million from two crypto PACs, including Sam Bankman-Fried\u2019s now-defunct<\/a> Protect Our Future PAC. Another Bankman-Fried\u2013funded<\/a> super PAC aligned with Democrats spent a little over $7,800 supporting Crockett. She also received just over $93,400 in support from PACs for the progressive groups Texas Organizing Project and the Working Families Party.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since Crockett entered Congress in 2023, she\u2019s taken more than $315,000 from corporate PACs. Among them are PACs for Comcast, Blackrock, DoorDash, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Cigna, and Home Depot.\u00a0<\/p>\n Crockett has said she wants people working at large corporations, many of which have offices in her district, like Goldman Sachs, to feel like they can support her campaign. Last year, she raised concerns<\/a> that new House maps in Texas might cut large companies out of her district. \u201cThis means that I don\u2019t have Southwest Airlines, or JSX Airlines, or Dallas Love Airport or Downtown or AT&T or Goldman Sachs,\u201d she said, \u201cand the list goes on, of amazing companies and corporations that I\u2019m typically bringing in to make sure that we can talk about economic opportunities for the people that live in my district.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n