DETROIT — For years, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) has sworn to reject donations from corporate political-action committees.
And for years, campaign-finance records show, Slotkin has employed workarounds to accept such contributions.
Slotkin, who’s running a tight race against GOP ex-Rep. Mike Rogers for an open Senate seat, doesn’t take corporate PAC money directly — but she takes cash from leadership PACs, run by elected politicians, that do take corporate donations.
And Slotkin employs the workaround to this day.
The Every Vote PAC, which is connected to Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, donated $2,500 to Slotkin in June, for instance. The Fetterman PAC accepts corporate PAC money.
Records show that over six years, Slotkin has raked in $840,000 from leadership PACs operated by friends in Democratic politics. Some $290,000 of that money has come during her Senate run.
Polls find the Slotkin-Rogers race for the seat Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s vacating to be a dead heat.
In Jan. 2018, during her first run for Congress, Slotkin made a pledge she’s repeated many times since.
“I will not be accepting corporate PAC donations to my campaign. Corporate PACs spend an enormous amount of money influencing politicians — on both sides of the aisle. And the results are really devastating. Politicians obviously feel more beholden to big companies that give them big checks than the people that they were elected by. But it doesn’t have to be that way, right?” she said. “I am making it really cut and dry. I will not be accepting corporate PAC donations to my campaign.”
Slotkin made the same promise for her Senate campaign last year. She’s sent about 100 emails this cycle mentioning corporate PACs, casting herself as the underdog.
“Winning this race is going to take a lot of resources. A crazy amount. And we have to do it without raising a single dollar from corporate PACs,” a Sept. 9 fundraising email read.
In four campaigns — she’s in her third term in Congress — Slotkin has always had a fundraising advantage — even in 2018 running against incumbent Rep. Mike Bishop.
And she’s used her pledge as a line of attack on Rogers.
“Mike Rogers has already started to see a flood of support from deep-pocketed Republican donors like Betsy DeVos, corporate PACs, and Super PACs who will all spend millions of dollars on his behalf in order to flip Michigan red,” Slotkin wrote in a Jan. 27 email.
The no-corporate-PACs pledge traces back to End Citizens United, which wrangled 85 Democratic candidates into signing on in 2018. (Citizens United is a Supreme Court ruling allowing unlimited corporate political contributions, in line with First Amendment protections for political speech.) In this cycle, about 65 people running have taken the pledge.
End Citizens United told The Post the distinction between accepting money from corporate PACs and accepting money from politicians who do is a big one. Lobbyists can’t demand access from a politician they have not supported directly.
“Congresswoman Slotkin has rejected corporate PAC money since Day 1 and continues to abide by that pledge to this day — unlike corporate sellout Mike Rogers who took over $5 million from corporate PACs then turned around and advanced their agenda at the expense of working families,” said spokesman Jonas Edwards-Jenks.
Slotkin’s campaign did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
“Slotkin started lying to Michiganders the moment she moved to Michigan,” Rogers spokesman Chris Gustafson told The Post. “From taking corporate cash to pretending to be a small-business owner to lying about being a farmer to avoid paying taxes, Slotkin has refused to tell the truth, and Michiganders simply can’t trust her.”
The Post reported Slotkin took — and continues to take — a farming tax credit at her rural Oakland County home, despite doing no farming. She also misrepresented the size and status of her property before the Michigan Farm Bureau, telling AgriPac she grows corn and soybeans on “about 300 acres.”
AgriPac last week endorsed Rogers in the race.
