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Reid to Reimburse Campaign for Donations
Residents and workers at the Ritz said the fund's full name is the Residents Executive Committee Holiday Fund and that it collects money each year from condominium residents to help provide Christmas gifts, bonuses and a party for the support staff.
Federal election law permits campaigns to provide "gifts of nominal value" but prohibits candidates from using political donations for personal expenses, such as mortgage, rent or utilities for "any part of any personal residence."
  Senate minority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. speaks at a news conference in Omaha, Neb. in this Jan. 12, 2005 file photo. Reid announced Monday, Oct. 16, 2006 he is amending his ethics reports to Congress to more fully account for a Las Vegas land deal that allowed him to collect $1.1 million for property he hadn't personally owned for three years. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, FILE) (Nati Harnik - AP) 
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The law specifically defines prohibited personal use expenses as any "obligation or expense of any person that would exist irrespective of the candidate's campaign or duties as a federal officeholder."
Land deeds show Reid and his wife, Landra, purchased a condominium for their Washington residence at the hotel for $750,000 in March 2001. The holiday fund has existed for years at the condo, workers said.
Reid's office said he paid cash for the condo, tapping a money market fund worth between $500,000 and $1 million in proceeds from an earlier sale of a home. "Senator Reid purchased his home in Washington, DC, with the proceeds of the sale of his prior residence in McLean, Va.," the office said.
Reid said Monday he believed the holiday fund expenses were permissible but he nonetheless was reimbursing the campaign.
"These donations were made to thank the men and women who work in the building for the extra work they do as a result of my political activities, and for helping the security officers assigned to me because of my Senate position," Reid said.
Larry Noble, the Federal Election Commission's former chief enforcement lawyer, said Reid's explanation is aimed at a "gray area" in the law by suggesting the donations were tied to his official Senate and political work.
"What makes this harder for the senator is that this is his personal residence and this looks like an event that everybody else at the residence is taking out of their personal money as they're living there," Noble said.
Back in 2000, Congress rebuked powerful House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster, R-Pa., for among other things creating the appearance, through poor record-keeping, that campaign committee expenditures were for personal rather than bona fide campaign uses.
On the land dealings, Reid announced Monday he had failed to disclose two other transactions on his prior ethics reports and would account for those on his amended reports along with the 2001 sale.
The first, he said, involved the 2004 sale of about one-third acre of land he owned in his hometown of Searchlight, Nev. And he said he had not reported his ownership since 1985 of a quarter acre of land his brother gave him in 1985.
Reid said the failure to disclose those transactions previously was due to "clerical errors" and they amounted to "two minor matters that were inadvertently left off my original disclosure forms."
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