By Joseph Bustos, Gina Smith, and Lucy Valesku
May 22 was a strong day of fundraising for state Rep. Bruce Bannister, a Greenville Republican and one of the most powerful members of the S.C. House of Representatives who is up for reelection in November.
On that day, $23,000 in donations flowed into his campaign account from one single address in Los Angeles. Earlier that month, $2,000 in donations came from the same LA address. Collectively, the $25,000 represent nearly 40% of all money Bannister raised in 2025.
The donations did not come from a fundraiser or individual donors. Instead, each came from a different limited liability corporation, or LLC, a common business structure. Campaign filings show every LLC listed the same L.A. address — the fifth floor of a beige office building — and each gave $1,000, the maximum allowed under S.C. law.
The identical dollar amounts, the shared address and the fact the checks were deposited the same day suggest a coordinated set of donations routed through a network of corporate entities. It’s a legal practice in South Carolina.
This type of LLC-based donation structure is becoming more common in politics. And finance campaign experts say it gives donors who can give more a big advantage. Instead of giving just once, the same donors can give again and again through different LLCs. Because each counts as a separate donor, they can legally give far more than the $1,000 limit — multiplying their influence.
“What the public servant is supposed to be doing is representing at least the majority of his or her constituents, rather than a few people who are providing the resources that help them win elections,” said Eric Heberlig, a professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. But if issues prioritized by large donors are taken up over topics that matter to a majority of constituents, “that’s skewed democracy at best,” Heberlig said.
Additionally, identifying the people behind an LLC can be difficult. That makes it hard for the public to know who is funding candidates since a specific name or easily searchable business isn’t attached to the contribution.
“Transparency matters because you need to be able to see if there’s a direct connection between the dollars that are being spent to keep somebody in office and how they carry out their official duties,” said Lynn Teague, the vice president at South Carolina’s chapter of the League of Women voters.
Bannister is a particularly influential recipient.
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How do donors influence candidates?
Teague, the League of Women Voters vice president, said influence through campaign donations isn’t always an explicit exchange of favors.
“A lot of what happens with the influence of money is not any kind of blatant quid pro quo,” Teague said. “Nobody has to make a phone call, nobody has to come in the (State House) lobby.”
But if a candidate knows an LLC or network of LLCs is “a big hunk of your campaign money, it’s going to be in the back of your mind that you need to take their point of view very carefully into consideration,” Teague continued.
Teague said she also favors increasing campaign contribution limits for individuals so that donors are less tempted to use dark money channels, which are untraceable.
“It has become increasingly obvious that the dark money problem is so hard to solve that we would be better off raising the campaign limits,” Teague said. “Not to some outrageous amount that would genuinely be a giant bribe but raise them, reduce the incentive to go with workarounds, like these LLCs.”
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