The following piece was produced by the Huffington Post's OffTheBus.
Reported by Alycia Dolan, with additional reporting by Kirsten Anderson, Jennifer Bogut, Ethan Hova, and Nancy Watzman.
A typical teenager can fit his or her entire financial savings into nothing more than a plastic piggy bank. Yet, the teenage son of Mr. Richard Henken and Mrs. Sarah Henken was able to contribute the maximum allowable contribution to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.
An investigation by The Huffington Post's OffTheBus found an example of minors donating their hard earned allowance to a presidential candidate, in the most recent campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for the third quarter of the year.
Mr. Henken, president of a Boston-based real estate development firm, donated the maximum amount also, as did his wife and daughter. Although it is legal for minors to donate money, some view this tactic as bundling. Bundling occurs when a group of people, in this case entire members of a family, individually contribute the maximum amount allowable to create large sums of cash. Opponents argue that bundling allows the wealthy to work around the political campaign contribution limit of $2,300 per person during this presidential election.
Indeed, Congress tried to ban contributions from minors when lawmakers approved the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. But the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that provision saying that it violated the First Amendment rights of minors.
Although family members may have similar ideologies and support the same candidate, what is questionable is how minors accumulate the money to give it away to a potential president. The Henkens decision to endorse president candidate Mitt Romney is evident by their campaign contributions. According to the FEC records, Mr. and Mrs. Henkens' young son, Samuel Henken, listed as a student, donated $2,300 to Romney for President, Inc. on September 30, 2007. His sister, also a student, donated the maximum contribution to Romney's campaign on the same day. Karen, his sister, and Richard Henken also each donated $2,300 to the Mitt Romney Campaign.
What is questionable is how a teenager can afford to donate the maximum amount of money and what motivates them to hand it over to a candidate? Most children don't have the political awareness or the financial capabilities to give that amount of money. Consequently, it is important to figure out where the money is coming from.
When asked for comment, we spoke with Sarah Henken, the wife of Samuel Henken, who described her family as "blessed economically." She suggested that the funds from her teenage son came from his own pocket. "My children have money. They had money from bar mitzvahs. They both earn money. They've been given money over the years from family and non-family. We feel it is their responsibility as it is ours to give to things that we believe in. That's our family story."
However, Sarah Henken, also said that she was proud and unapologetic for her family bundling a number of maximum contributions. "We live in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, unlike in Ohio, we live in a single party state. So, it is important when you don't agree with the ruling party to make your feelings known. We raise our children to be active and participate as much as they're able to participate in the political goings on around them."
When a parent that works for a big company and their children give money to the same candidate, this creates the illusion of potential bundling. Although a family is much smaller than a lobby group or corporation, when does donating money through another person go from bending the rules to breaking the law? As the old cliché goes, there's no such thing as a free gift.