US House candidate Melissa Vine faces ethics complaint over donations ahead of endorsement

A progressive Iowa political group has submitted an ethics complaint against the campaign of Melissa Vine, a Democrat running for Iowa's 3rd Congressional District, accusing her campaign of trying to make dozens of donations on others' behalf in advance of the group's endorsement.

The PAC, Iowa Unity Coalition, held a vote Tuesday, April 30, to endorse in the 3rd District Democratic primary — an online process limited to registered members who pay $20 to the group.

The vote resulted in the group backing Lanon Baccam, a former U.S. Department of Agriculture official and veteran who is competing with Vine to face Republican U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn in November.

Ahead of the endorsement vote, Iowa Unity Coalition saw a sudden uptick in members, chair Mitch Henry told the Des Moines Register, as well as periods during the voting window where large numbers of members submitted their preference.

"We had a surge of individuals joining the coalition Tuesday, during the day and night prior," Henry said.

An audit by the group found 41 votes by people who were not registered as members. An additional 43, Henry said, had all signed up shortly ahead of the vote and had matching registration details: the same address, the same credit card information, the same donation amount ($20) and email addresses that ended with "@melissavine.com."

The group disqualified those 84 total votes from the final count after an emergency board meeting the morning of Wednesday, May 1. As a result, Baccam received a majority of qualified votes and the PAC's endorsement, which went public Monday, May 7.

Henry said Vine's campaign manager, Lou McDonald, told him he had "registered all the members and then voted for all the members."

In a statement provided to the Register, Vine said the campaign made a "clerical error," and requested that ActBlue — an online fundraising platform used by Democratic campaigns and groups across the country — reverse the donations.

"Our campaign manager made a clerical error on signing our team up for these Iowa Unity Coalition events, and he reached out to ActBlue to reverse the transactions once Mitch Henry brought them to our attention."

The campaign provided an email exchange corroborating the request to a staffer at ActBlue on the morning of May 1 to reverse the donations. ActBlue did not respond to a request for comment.

Henry said he filed a complaint with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board on May 3 over the phone and received a response Monday.

Taylor McDonald, assistant legal counsel with the board, confirmed the complaint had been filed. McDonald and Zach Goodrich, the executive director of the board, did not respond to further inquiries about the complaint.

Both the board and Henry declined to make a copy of the complaint available.

Henry said he believed the campaign may have broken state or federal campaign finance laws with the donations.

"The concern is, if they did use the campaign funds to sign up these members, that's not lawful," Henry said. "That's inappropriate. It doesn't matter what their excuse is."

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Vine, a Des Moines-based nonprofit leader and small business owner, jumped into the 3rd District race in November.

She has positioned herself as a progressive and political outsider while running against Baccam, a former Biden campaign operative whose campaign launch was backed by State Auditor Rob Sand and a slate of other Iowa Democratic leaders.

The U.S. House Democrats' campaign arm has also put its support behind Baccam, who raised over $900,000 last fundraising quarter in the largest haul of any Iowa congressional candidate.

The winner of the Democratic primary in June will face Nunn, who is seeking his second term after defeating former U.S. Rep. Cindy Axne, a Democrat, by less than a percentage point in 2022.

Galen Bacharier covers the Statehouse & politics for the Register. Reach him at gbacharier@registermedia.com or (573) 219-7440, and follow him on Twitter @galenbacharier.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa PAC files ethics complaint against House candidate Melissa Vine