recently, March 26, a 2004 political contribution to E.W. Cromartie II by a Nelson Mullions Riley & Scarborough political action committee (PAC) was noted as a contribution by the law firm itself without the PAC shield. Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, the state’s largest law firm and the professional home of Columbia mayoral candidate Steve Morrison, should not have contributed to Cromartie’s campaign fund because Nelson Mullins was the recipient of about $158,000 in legal fees from the City of Columbia, having gained the legal services contract without price competition.

The law firm was working on the city’s selffinanced convention center headquarters hotel deal, the deal that died a natural death due to lack of financial feasibility and a wealth of public protest.

Whenever there is a contract with the city won without price competition, following the date of the contract, the contractor cannot contribute to any city elected official’s campaign funds. That is illegal.

And, as it turns out, the law firm did not contribute. Its PAC did.

People at Nelson Mullins did nothing illegal. They simply failed to see to it Cromartie’s campaign contributions record submitted to the South Carolina Ethics Commission listed the PAC contribution as a PAC contribution. The listing said simply “NMRS,” as in Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough. It should have read “NMRS PAC.”

Immediately above Nelson Mullins on Cromartie’s alphabetical listing of campaign contributors there is “NBSC PAC,” the political action committee of the National Bank of South Carolina, correctly indicated.

The distinction is narrow, but the distinction needs to be made.

According to SourceWatch

“A PAC is a type of political committee organized to spend money for the election or the defeat of a candidate. The PAC was created in 1944 by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The CIO used their PAC to contribute money to pro–union candidates for office and to get around the Smith–Connally Act, which banned direct union contributions to candidates.

Business groups began to create PACs in the 1960s and 1970s to counter the strength of the union PACs.

In the 1980s members of Congress began creating Leadership PACs to distribute money to members of their party with the intent of gaining clout within the party. By 1994, at least 38 members of Congress had Leadership PACs. Today, there are hundreds of members with Leadership PACs.”

In the early 2000s, Mayor Bob Coble put together a PAC, Citizens for a Balanced Community, a means to raise and distribute money while he prepared to run for the U.S. Senate. He then hit on most of the same contributors to his PAC to help with the race for the Senate, but since the contributions to the PAC were counted as entirely separate from what came in to support the Senate race, the maximum could be contributed to each in the same election cycle. And, of course, he continued to raise campaign funds for his 2006 mayoral run for re–election, using many of the same contributors because the re–election campaign was separate and removed from the Senate try and from the PAC.

So the contribution to Cromartie by the NMRS PAC was from another entity entirely, not the law firm. The PAC was organized by the partners at Nelson Mullins and its war chest was the recipient of contributions by the partners at Nelson Mullins, and the decision to contribute from the NMRS PAC to Cromartie was made by Nelson Mullins people, but under the rules, the contribution did not come from Nelson Mullins.

The Business Section of The Columbia Star regrets the error.