THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

You don't have to look long to know that Bernie Sanders doesn't take money from PACs and has discouraged the formation of any SuperPACs that want to work on his behalf. That is why this latest attack on Bernie is of interest.

Bernie Sanders may decry how big money influences political elections, but that isn’t stopping groups independent of the Democratic presidential candidate from spending significant cash in his name.

The latest organization to do so: Friends of the Earth Action.

The national environmental nonprofit this week released an ad that praises Sanders’ green record and highlights his early opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.

“He’s proven a bold and fearless voice for a healthy and just world,” the ad’s narrator says. The ad, first reported by CNN, is airing in Iowa and New Hampshire markets this week.

Friends of the Earth Action is a social welfare nonprofit, also known as a 501(c)(4) organization. Under law, 501(c)(4) nonprofits are not required to disclose their donors.

These types of nonprofits have increasingly become vehicles for dark money — untraceable and often immense cash flows used to influence elections. Such nonprofits must by law avoid being primarily political, but that has not stopped them from collectively injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into elections this decade.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign labeled Friends of the Earth Action a dark money group in a recent blog post titled “Sanders’ ‘no super PAC’ myth.”

But Friends of the Earth Action rejects the dark money label.

“We’ve got a long history of engaging in the political process that predates super PACs and Citizens United,” said Erich Pica, the group’s president. “So they can call us a dark money group, but we are mainly small-donor driven.”

Friends of the Earth Action says it “provides extra political muscle” to sister group Friends of the Earth, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 1969 that “urge[s] policymakers to defend the environment and work towards a healthy environment for all people,” according to its website.

What is most amusing about this claim is that Friends of the Earth Action is acting according to the rules set up to allow PACS, advocating for specific issues without the usual coordination with the campaigns so commonly seen with the Republican candidates.