This invitation to an October fundraiser for a new leadership PAC for Rep. Tim Holden (D-PA) shows how Party Time can serve as an early warning system for fundraising before detailed campaign contribution reports are filed with the U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Leadership PACs are not as strictly regulated as lawmakers’ re-election campaign funds. Theoretically lawmakers are supposed to pass along the money they raise to their colleagues, as a way to build clout and help their parties. However, many lawmakers use these PACs to cover expenses that would not be allowed for a regular campaign committee. (See this recent expose by Propublica centering on Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and his propensity for using his leadership PAC to fund golf trips.)  Some 70 percent of lawmakers now sport leadership PACs.

While the invitation in our database clearly connects Holden to PENNPAC, the committee is not associated with Holden’s candidate summary report on the FEC’s website, nor does the committee’s first monthly receipts/disbursements report indicate that it is affiliated with Holden in any way. The only official FEC record is an August filing for the creation of the leadership committee.

However, the committee raised no money between the August 19th filing date and the September 30th third quarter deadline, meaning it has remained virtually invisible to databases designed to track these kinds of committees.  The Center for Responsive Politics has compiled a list of 247 leadership committees and associated those committees with members of Congress, but there are still several mystery PACs and, as evidenced by Holden’s committee, others that remain hidden.

Maybe the congressman was waiting for the fourth quarter to kick start his new leadership committee. The only invitation for PENNPAC in the Party Time database may be the committee’s first fundraiser.

This weekend features a couple of getaways from the city offered by lawmakers seeking cash for their leadership PACs.

Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) will be hosting a “Pacific Northwest Summer Retreat” at the Suquamish Clearwater Casino in Washington state. Guests can look forward to sailing, kayaking (with the Congressman!), gambling and a ‘legislative update breakfast.’ Contributions are to be made out to his New Apollo Energy PAC–named for the New Apollo Energy Act he and 14 other representatives introduced in the House on June 9, 2005.

The second fundraiser will be hosted by House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA). Contributions are to be made out to the joint fundraising committee Americans for a Conservative Course. The invitation states that all donations will then be equally distributed between the four leadership committees: the Freedom Project (Boehner), For America’s Republican Majority (Latham), the Next Century Fund (Burr), and the Republican Majority Fund (Chambliss).

Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) is finding herself in the “fight for her life,”  in defending her seat against Democratic challenger Kay Hagan says the U.S. News & World Report. Her problem, reports the American Spectator, is that she’s spent most of her time in D.C. rather than North Carolina, and that she’s done a poor job of constitutent services.

Dole, however, has done a decent job of partying. Our Party Time database shows nine fundraising parties for the senator this year, all but two of them in Washington, DC.  (We previously blogged here about an August party for Dole sponsored by several timber PACs.) And of those two non-DC events, one was in Georgia and the other in New York City.

The deep connections that Dole enjoys thanks to her extensive GOP pedigree–she served in two cabinet posts and of course is married to former Senator Bob Dole (R-KS)–is evident when you dig into the meat of the invitations.

The Georgia party was hosted by several Republican Georgia elected officials: Governor Sonny Perdue, Secretary of State Karen Handel, and Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson. The venue: the home of Oscar and Virginia Persons. Oscar Persons is a partner at Alston & Bird, a legal and lobbying firm which also happens to employ Sen. Dole’s husband, former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS), as well as former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD).

The New York party in April also featured a former senator as a draw, in this case former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato. (The former Republican senator from New York now lobbies for Park Strategies.) Bob Giuffra and his wife, Joyce, also hosted. Bob is a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, the venue for the event, where he specializes in securities and white collar crime. Another host, George T. Conway III, is most well known for his reported involvement in the Paula Jones case back in the late 1990s. His firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, is famous for representing the tobacco giant Philip Morris when the company was sued, along with other tobacco companies, by the U.S. government for deciving the American public about the health effects of tobacco. (Tobacco, of course, is a big industry in North Carolina.)

We don’t have any invitations in our database for Hagan, Dole’s challenger. This doesn’t mean that she doesn’t party too. It only means that we haven’t received any of the invitations. That’s why we always encourage our readers to send us any invitations for congressional fundraisers that come their way.