Yikes, I wouldn’t want to face those kind of numbers. According to the Sacramento Bee, Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) is going to have to:

Rep. John Doolittle’s practice of paying a 15 percent fundraising commission to a company owned by his wife violates the ethical standards of the industry, a national group of fundraising professionals told the congressman this week.

The 27,000-member Association of Fundraising Professionals said in a letter to Doolittle that its long-standing ethics code “explicitly prohibits percentage-based compensation” and urged his campaign to cease doing so with Julie Doolittle’s company, Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions.

Of course, Doolittle’s top aide and political advisor Ricahrd Robinson says that their percentage-based compensation is “common in the industry, but it is consistent with the history of Congressman Doolittle’s own campaigns.” The head of the Association thinks otherwise:

Association head Paulette Maehara said she was so alarmed when she read the campaign’s explanation for the practice in a weekend story in the Washington Post that she wrote Doolittle’s office to complain. She said she also would have written Julie Doolittle except that her company is not publicly listed.

“This is absolutely not the standard in the industry,” she said. “Fundraisers can charge a flat fee, an hourly fee or a combination of both. We do support incentive compensation as long as it is not based on the percentage of the money raised.”

The controversy surrounding Julie Doolittle’s fundraising, which has netted her $180,000 in commissioned fees since 2003, may cause her to move to a flat rate fee.