Political party committee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the United States, political party committees are organizations, officially affiliated with a political party and registered with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), which raise and spend money for political campaigning. They are not to be confused with political action committees, which are formally independent of political parties and subject to different rules.
Though their own internal rules differ, the two major political parties (Democrats and Republicans) have essentially parallel sets of committees. (Third parties have varied organizational structures, although several do have national committees officially recognized by the FEC.)
[edit] National committees
The Democratic National Committee, Green National Committee, Libertarian National Committee, and Republican National Committee are the official central organizations for their respective parties. They have the greatest role in presidential election years when they are responsible for planning the nominating convention and also spend heavily in support of their party's nominee (some of this spending is directly coordinated with the nominee's campaign; the rest is in independent expenditures).
The two major parties also have two national Hill committees, controlled by their caucus leadership in each house of Congress, which work specifically to elect members of their own party to Congress.
The individual contribution limit to a single national party committee is currently $26,700 per calendar year, but is indexed to inflation.
[edit] State and local committees
State party organizations typically have both federal and non-federal accounts, and money can be transferred between the two under certain circumstances. (A third and more complicated category of money, Levin funds, has been created by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.) The federal limit for individual contributions to state and local party committees is a combined total of $10,000 per year.
