Frist Opens Non-Federal PAC Account

Here's quick update to last week's post about former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn): He just opened a non-federal account for his Volunteer PAC.

This means Frist will have two accounts for his political action committee, one raising money to support House, Senate and presidential candidates; the other will be used to help state and local candidates. The federal account for Volunteer PAC is limited to accepting $5,000 contributions per year, while the non-federal account can take unlimited donations.

The non-federal account is formally known as Volunteer PAC-Tennessee, signaling that Frist will use this primarily to boost Republican candidates in his native state (another sign of his interest in a governor's race in 2010?)

Thanks to the folks at CQ's PoliticalMoneyLine for unearthing this filing with the Internal Revenue Service, where non-federal accounts have to file their records. This sort of non-federal account is now illegal for members of the House and Senate to maintain. But former lawmakers -- such as former Sens. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) -- have used these accounts to help fund their post-senatorial political activities. (Daschle barely raised $20,000 for his federal PAC in 2005-2006, but a handful of wealthy donors gave him more than $150,000 in 2006 to fund his PAC's non-federal activities.)