New developments in the story of Iowa Representative Cindy Axne and the man she’s been giving her proxy vote to in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In a previous article, Iowa Field Report broke down Axne’s use of the proxy vote and allowed a Congress member from Maryland, Jamie Raskin, to vote on her behalf. You’ll remember Raskin is pretty liberal; he’s open to raising income and corporate taxes for any tax bracket and opposes the Electoral College.
Documents filed with the Federal Elections Commission show Raskin is now raising money for Axne and other House members. The Twelfth Amendment Defenders Fund was registered with the FEC on September 25th by treasurer Aaron Jarboe. Aaron’s Linkedin Page lists him as the Finance Director and Senior Political Advisor for Raskin’s Congressional campaign committee. According to opensecrets.org, Jarboe was the sixth highest recipient of cash from Raskin’s campaign committees and leadership PACs in 2018 and second highest recipients in 2020, right behind the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Jarboe is also listed as Finance Director of Democracy Summer PAC on its website, an organization Raskin founded to train high school and college-aged young adults to be future democrat volunteers and operatives essentially.
The PAC is a Joint Fundraising Committee(JFC), meaning each participant has to agree and sign required paperwork to be added to the JFC. There are 22 members of Congress in this PAC, including all four Iowa Democrat candidates for Congress, five each from Pennsylvania and Florida, three from Michigan, and one each from Alaska and Montana’s at-large seats, New Hampshire, Main, and Minnesota.
Recognize any names? JD Scholten is listed a few pages down.
This may be Raskin’s way to ensure that if the Presidential Electoral College ends in a tie and goes to the House, Democrats have majorities to elect Joe Biden. Republicans currently hold the majority in 24 House delegations and tied in another. By holding the 3 to 1 Democrat majority in the Iowa delegation, and backing 2 challengers in Pennsylvania where the delegation is tied, 3 challengers in Florida where Republicans hold a 14-13 majority, and challengers in the Republican-held at-large seats in Alaska and Montana, Raskin could very well ensure the House would elect Joe Biden as the next President of the United States. This isn’t the first time Raskin has contributed to Axne’s campaign. His leadership PAC –Democracy Summer Leadership PAC, contributed a total of $3,504.31 in 2018 – $1,000 in direct contribution and the rest as in-kind contributions for voter contact activities. A photograph on the Democracy Summer Leadership PAC website displays four of the program’s fellows working with Axne’s campaign in 2018. Iowans have problems with people who won’t commit to showing up for a job, and they certainly have problems with out of state actors coming in and trying to influence results.
