Matt Rosendale Charged with Illegal Campaign Coordination in FEC Complaint

HELENA – Montana Democratic Party Executive Director Monica Lindeen today issued the following statement calling attention to the week-old Federal Elections Commission (FEC) complaint filed against failed U.S. Senate candidate Matt Rosendale for illegal campaign coordination.

“Matt Rosendale and his never-ending pursuit of a Washington, D.C. Congressional gig has once again let Montana down,” Lindeen said. “Rosendale has a history of cooking the books in order to skirt donation limits, and now he’s being called out for more illegal campaign actions. Montanans deserve a representative who follows the rules and isn’t a political opportunist.” 

The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed an FEC complaint on Oct. 24 against the Super PAC “America First Action,” pointing out that the PAC illegally coordinated $6.6 million in campaign expenditures with three Federal campaigns, including Rosendale. The CLC is one of the leading election protection organizations in the country.

Rosendale is making his third bid for Federal office — running in a five-way primary for the U.S. House this time. He lost a U.S. Senate race in 2018 and a U.S. House race in 2014. Rosendale has run for, or held, four different publicly-elected offices in the past three years.

As Montana’s current Commissioner of Securities and Insurance, the office responsible for regulating insurance companies in the state, Rosendale approved insurance rate increases of up to 23 percent on Montanans soon after his election in 2016. He also cooked the books on some shady donations in 2017 and 2018 to help pay off his campaign debt from his previous run for the U.S. House. One of those pay-back schemes involved insurance executives, who shared Rosendale’s love of junk insurance programs.