So far, the 2012 election has been chock full of negative advertising, and most of it has come from innocuous sounding independent groups with names like “Restore Our Future” and “Red White and Blue Fund.” (Names that readers of this site will of course recognize as Super PACs.)

As it turns out, there’s a good reason for campaigns to let outside groups do the punching: It works. Or at least, that’s the conclusion of some new academic research, which finds negative ads from independent groups are more effective than negative ads that come directly from candidates.

In a study published in the political science journal American Politics Research (an earlier non-gated version can be found here), Deborah Jordan Brooks and Michael Murov, both professors of Government at Dartmouth College, find that the attack ads from both sources are equally persuasive. But when the ads come directly from a candidate, they also generate backlash. Since voters dislike negative ads, they lose a little bit of respect for the candidates who endorse the attack. But if the attack ad comes from the independent group, there’s much less backlash against the candidate.

“The fact that the public cannot identify the contributors to so many of these groups thus makes it easier for these groups to go on the attack,” Brooks and Murov write in their article, “Assessing Accountability in a Post-Citizens United Era: The Effects of Attack Ad Sponsorship by Unknown Independent Groups.”

They go on to note that this “helps to explain why negative ads by these groups are now so much more prevalent than in previous eras.”

To test the effects of independent negative ads, Brooks and Murov asked survey participants to judge two fictional candidates for a state assembly race: “Tim Clark” and “Michael Norris.” First, the participants watched positive ads about both candidates touting their “proven leadership,” “knowledge and integrity,” and “common sense approach” and showing footage of the candidates interacting with constituents and working at their desks. Then participants watched an attack ad against Tim Clark. Clark was accused of absenteeism, tax evasion, and “bad debts and campaign violations,” and pictured in black and white photos with ominous music and sound effects.

When the anti-Tim Clark ad was sponsored by Michael Norris, survey participants dropped their favorability of Norris by an average of 0.85 points on a 7-point scale. But when the ad was sponsored by the more anodyne sounding “Citizens for a Better State Government,” Norris’ favorability fell by 0.27 points on a 7-point scale. In other words, there was much less backlash.

Certainly, few voters watch ads in this exact way. But the study does capture an underlying dynamic in how voters respond to these ads, and one that will be further tested with the barrage that is almost certainly still ahead. There may also be cumulative effects that the one-off study does not capture.

According to the Wesleyan Media Project, independent advertising in presidential campaigns is up 1,100% compared to what it was at this stage four years ago, and 86% of that advertising is negative advertising (as compared to 53% of candidate advertising). Overall, 70% of advertising in the current presidential campaign is negative – as compared to just 9% at this stage four years ago. Historically, independent groups are 2.5 times as likely to go negative than candidates.

Better disclosure is one answer, but Brooks and Murov caution that “even increased disclosure will not change the fact that harsh attack ads sponsored by outside entities will tend to be more effective than comparable ads sponsored by candidates, which will tend to enhance the relative power of ads sponsored by independent groups on the airwaves”

In other words, all signs point to a long and vicious season of independent expenditure attack ads. And it’s hard to see the positive side of that.

When a Leadership PAC and a Super PAC join forces, the influx of cash can help swing an election, concentrating power and weakening our democratic principles. A high profile example of the impact of such a PACkage (sorry) came to light after Roll Call reported that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s Leadership PAC, ERIC PAC, contributed $25,000 to the Campaign for Primary Accountability, a Super PAC dedicated to defeating incumbents. The contribution was to be used, in the words of a Cantor political consultant, “only in the effort to support Congressman Kinzinger, in a primary race against Congressman Manzullo.” (The two Republican Members of Congress were pitted against one another as a result of redistricting in Illinois. Kinzinger, a freshman, is a favorite of Cantor’s “young guns.”) Kinzinger’s race benefitted from another $25,000 contribution from Rep. Aaron Schock’s Leadership PAC, the Generation Y fund. The Generation Y fund contribution was also funneled through the Campaign for Primary Accountability.

Although Leadership PACs have long been used to by Members of Congress to curry favor with their colleagues, prior to the invention of Super PACS, there were limits on the amounts Leadership PACs could contribute to candidates’ campaigns. Now, those limits can be easily ignored.

The press around Cantor’s contributions revolves around the damage control he is doing to convince old guard in the House that he is still in their corner. But the inside baseball is not what should concern the public. Instead, the spectacle of Eric Cantor using the confluence of Leadership PACs and Super PACs to become kingmaker should be what is making the papers. In the last weeks of the campaign—a campaign in which early polling had Manzullo in the lead—the Campaign for Primary Accountability spent at least $75,000 on television ads to defeat Manzullo. Two-thirds of that amount came from two people: Cantor and Schock. Assuming Kinzinger is elected in the fall, voters in his district would be right to wonder whether in a tough vote, he will represent their interests, or the interests of Eric Cantor.

Sunshine Week presents the perfect opportunity each year to recognize the importance of transparency and open government. This year, with the ever-increasing influence of often secretive super PACs in our elections, the need for transparency is even more clear.

We have an opportunity for greater disclosure right now. A new bill -- the DISCLOSE Act 2012  will, if passed by Congress, require:

• Corporations and other outside groups to stand by their campaign ads -- with their leader and top financial contributors disclosed in the ads.

• Public reporting by corporations, unions, super PACs and other outside groups to the FEC within 24 hours of making a campaign expenditure or transferring funds to other groups for campaign-related activity (of $10,000 or more).

• Corporations and other outside groups to disclose campaign-related spending to shareholders and organization members.

• Lobbyists to disclose campaign-related expenditures in conjunction with their lobbying activities.

In the wake of the two-year-old infamous Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United v. FEC  -- which allowed unlimited and undisclosed money to flow into our elections, an increase in new super PACs has now led to an increase in the amount of money making it’s way into our elections -- to the tune of over 74.8 million (and counting)! This is no cheap change.

Help get the word out by writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Let your community know that it’s time to expose dark money behind our elections. It’s time to pass the DISCLOSE Act 2012.

Though we can see what these super PACs are spending their money on, the rules that let us see who’s giving them money are weak and don’t let us see the whole picture. Without disclosure, we can’t know if the ads we’re watching are funded by corporate VIPs with hidden agendas or everyday people like you and me.

If you want to see if your rep is a co-sponsor on the bill, look them up here and encourage them to keep up the support. If they are not co-sponsors, let them know too that it’s time to open up our government.

The bill has not yet made its way to Senate, so make sure to ask your senator to introduce a complementary bill and bring transparency into our government.

Writing a letter to the editor is easy and takes only a few minutes with our online tool -- we’ll walk you through each step. Lawmakers pay close attention to what goes on in the newspapers of their districts. A letter to the editor will help raise awareness about the need for transparency and accountability in your community. And it sends a clear message to your representative: we’re not afraid to speak out and demand transparency in our elections.

Want to learn more about the DISCLOSE Act? You can follow our updated blog posts about it here:

One of the questions we frequently hear in this brave new world of super PACs and the seven-figure donations made to these independent organizations is, simply, why is this a problem? Thanks to super PACs, after all, candidates like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich can say in the race far longer than they could have in the past, giving voters a wider choice. A Mitt Romney, meanwhile, has super PAC supporters who can attack them both. Super PACs are contributing to political speech, the thinking goes, to a robust democratic process where primary voters who go to the polls in March, April--perhaps as late as June--will have a say in who their party's nominee is.

The problem, simply put, is that the donors to these organizations are not disinterested promoters of politics, but rather, individuals with numerous issues before local, state and federal governments, and the means to influence those who will be in charge of resolving those issues. Political giving is how they accomplish their ends.

A lobbyist for Waste Control Specialists, a company owned by mega-donor Harold C. Simmons, explained to an Albuquerque Journal reporter in 1999 why the Texas billionaire had given to New Mexico politicians: "We didn't want to be strangers when we showed up with a request," he said.

The request involved state tax breaks and incentives to lure a nuclear enrichment facility to the southeast corner of New Mexico--one move in a 17-year long struggle Simmons and a company he controls undertook to win approval for a low level radioactive waste dump in Andrews, Texas, just across the border from the site of the proposed uranium plant. The latter effort is still ongoing but has ultimately been successful--after the Simmons combine contributed more than $1.13 million to Texas legislative races, $1.68 million to gubernatorial candidates and $264,500 to Texas political parties.

Overall, Simmons, his wife, two of his daughters and the companies he controls have contributed at least $34.8 million to parties, political action committees, politicians and other political organizations, including super PACs like American Crossroads and 527s like Swift Boat Vets & POWs for Truth.

To arrive at that number, we started with data from InfluenceExplorer.com, which has federal campaign data from the Center for Responsive Politics and state level contributions for the National Institute on Money in State Politics. We added 527 contributions reported to the Internal Revenue Service (you can look them up here or download them in bulk from the Center for Responsive Politics), records of contributions to Texas political action committees from the Texas Ethics Commission, and searches of other state databases of PAC contributions where Simmons had contributed to state level candidates, including California and Virginia.

We searched for giving by Simmons, his wife, two of his adult daughters who've listed his companies or family foundation as their employers and direct contributions from his companies, which include Contran, Valhi, NL Industries, Titanium Metals, Southwest Louisiana Land and Waste Control Specialists. We included relevant giving by Amalgamated Sugar during the years in which Simmons owned that firm. We also looked at lobbying records--federal ones in InfluenceExplorer.com, and state records from the Texas Ethics Commission. We also looked for contributions by the employees and PACs of those companies, but totaled that figure separately: they gave about $2.8 million. The earliest federal contributions are from 1989 and run through 2011;  the earliest state level contributions are from 1993.

Simmons's activities have generated a great deal of attention in Texas, especially his efforts with Waste Control Specialists to secure permits to dump massive amounts of low level radioactive waste there. Media accounts were incredibly helpful, and there has been great reporting on the issue in the Lone Star State from the Dallas Morning News, the Austin-American Statesman, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Houston Chronicle, the Texas Observer and the Texas Tribune. A lot of these accounts are available online, but many--especially the older stories--were accessed through Lexis-Nexis.

Because radioactive waste disposal is a highly regulated endeavor, there is a great deal of public information about Waste Control Specialists' activities in Texas, ranging from license applications to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to a website the company itself launched as part of its public relations effort. But most government decisions are not made with so much public input and disclosure of documents. While Simmons has left a long paper trail, both of publicly reported campaign contributions and public filings with regulatory agents, many big donors find alternate routes to influence the legislative process without leaving nearly so public a footprint. Tracing their activities, in an era of organizations that influence politics without disclosing donors, is the real challenge, and something that we'll look at in future stealthy wealthy posts.

With Super Tuesday quickly approaching, we decided to take a look at what local bloggers in Super Tuesday states are saying about how super PACs have been shaping their respective political landscapes.

• Valerie Joyner of the Blue Ridge Review blog took a look into campaign contributions of Virginia candidate for Blue Ridge Supervisor, Janet Clarke. Joyner alleges that Clarke has gotten many contributions from special interests. According to official reports, Janet Clarke has raised over $91,000.  Joyner maintains, “These numbers are in some cases double or triple the dollars raised by other candidates for Loudoun County Supervisor positions.” Joyner argues that Clarke should clear up questions about the origins of the donations. For instance, Clarke received donations from companies that have projects and business coming before the Board.  Furthermore, Joyner has concerns about contributions from PACs  and others with developer interests coming before the Board, such as donations from a company that has connections to “big box” stores. Joyner points out, “The question here is, because of these donations to her campaign, will Janet Clarke recluse herself if and when a contributor’s issue comes before the Board?”
• The blog Real Loudon raises questions about the campaign contributions of Loudon County supervisor Geary Higgins. The blog points out that Higgins was one of several  recipients of a “remarkable flood of developer cash that flowed into Loudoun GOP coffers during this election cycle.” Using information compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project , the blog determined that Higgins’s largest source of cash out of the $126,276 he raked in was the $10,200 donated to his campaign by a PAC called “Citizens for Virginia’s Future.” The blog post maintains, “Perhaps needless to say, by the strangest of coincidences all of the 22 of the “citizens” who make up this group seem to be from the real estate and development industry.”
• The Alaska Federation of Natives formed the super PAC “Alaskans Standing Together” to  use money from Native corporations to support Senator Lisa Murkowski’s write-in campaign. According to Shripathi Kamath,  “Murkowski was a known commodity, supporting federal entitlements for Native Alaskans as well as big-oil interests.” While Kamath is happy to see Alaska Natives have power in national politics, she worries about the influence special interests might have on the political process.  She writes, “The elephant in the room was the super PAC money being spent on advertising that overwhelmed anything seen before.”  For her take, she Kamath's post on Director's Cut. 
• Melaleuca Inc, a company founded by Idaho Falls billionaire Frank VanderSloot , donated $1 million to Mitt Romney’s super PAC “Restore Our Future.” According to Dan Popkey, VanderSloot has been a longtime support of Romney’s: "VanderSloot is a national finance co-chairman for Romney and has been a backer of mostly Republican causes and candidates. He was a key supporter of the 2011 'Students Come First' laws authored by Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna." For the entire story, see Popkey's post on the Idaho Statesmen.

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon devoted a special slow jam to President Obama and super PACs with Brian Williams joining the musical stylings of the Legendary Roots Crew. The topic is nothing new to Sunlight, but we always appreciate a new format to publicize the issue and love to see more late night shows addressing the shadowy dealings of campaign finance. Follow Sunlight's Super PAC Tracker for updated filings and in the meantime, check out last night's segment:

How about a little wonky humor for your Valentine's Day? This morning presidential candidate and campaign finance crusader Buddy Roemer started tweeting super PAC valentines. Soon others were chiming in with their own zingers, though as you'll see Gov. Roemer continued to dominate the meme. Enjoy and keep on tweeting!

Byron Tau makes a great point in Politico: Obama's reversal on super PACs returns "to a system where corporate donors, unions and other wealthy individuals are able to pay big money for access to policymakers, lawmakers and key administration aides."

The President's announcement not only opened the door to cabinet members and top White House staff headlining fundraisers for unlimited checks, it announced with certainty that they would be doing so:

Senior campaign officials as well as some White House and Cabinet officials will attend and speak at Priorities USA fundraising events. While campaign officials may be appearing at events to amplify our message, these folks won't be soliciting contributions for Priorities USA.

That might take a bit of thought to fully digest. We often assume that the laws structuring the Executive Branch generally protect merit and official work from being polluted by inappropriate political activity. But this announcement changes the stakes significantly.

There's a huge difference between regular fundraisers and super PAC events. Obama announced that White House Officials and Cabinet officials will be appearing at events "to amplify our message." "Amplify our message" means raise money, and at these events, there is literally no limit to the money. Whether or not top officials are soliciting the checks or not is beside the point. Some of the most powerful officials in our government are selling their time to the highest bidder, and, as things stand now, the public isn't even able to know about their meetings.

Cabinet secretaries have, in many ways, far more power than individual Members of Congress. Laws often give them broad, unilateral discretion in carrying out the work of the country, making decisions that affect everyone's business in profound ways. Of course, that fact is not lost on moneyed interests, who are willing to pay dearly to move policies even the slightest bit in any direction.

Unlimited checks are now going to upset that balance. Top administration officials are going to advertise their attendance at super PAC (Priorities USA) events, to bring in as much money for them as possible. The Obama announcement wasn't about getting out a message, it was about raising money. And we shouldn't be naive about why top officials are attending fundraisers either -- their attention is for sale to the highest bidder.

And the public has no way of knowing whether or when top White House officials are attending these fundraisers. If the transportation secretary attends an event that people have given $200,000 each to attend, shouldn't we know that? Especially this administration, that prides itself on openness, should recognize that the public needs to know whether and how its top officials are involved in these unlimited-funds fundraisers.

The White House likes to pride itself on saying they released the visitor logs. But getting into the White House is free. If someone pays a million dollars for access to the Secretary of State, then we really need to know about it.

So what happens next? Will this announcement from the President be accepted as sufficient, especially when his likely rivals aren't even disclosing their bundlers?

If the President is going to let his cabinet be involved in raising huge sums of money from individual contributors, he should at least make that process transparent. The President should lean on Priorities USA, who should disclose top officials' attendance at fundraisers. He should also require White House officials and Cabinet Secretaries to disclose their attendance at fundraisers somewhere as part of their schedule, as the President himself does (see "campaign activity"). The Hatch Act may create some difficulties in finding the right mechanism for this disclosure, but we need a better answer than total secrecy.

Because under the system we have now, the country's most powerful officials have an incentive to precede every official action with a meeting of the most well-heeled donors who are likely to be affected. If cabinet officials attend unlimited fundraisers, every act of their work becomes a potential hook for juicing donors. The very least we can do is make it possible for the public to understand how top officials are involved with these fundraisers.

Without public disclosure of cabinet and White House officials' involvement in unlimited fundraisers, who gets to define acceptable cabinet-level involvement in fundraising? At its best, cabinet officers all get a new distraction to their duties, at its worst, the executive branch itself becomes an extension of the Presidential dark money machine.

House Democrats unveiled The DISCLOSE 2012 Act (HR 4010, not up on THOMAS yet) today, a crucial step toward transparency to address the corrupting influence unlimited, secret corporate and union money is having on our elections and our elected officials.

Shortly before the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision, the Sunlight Foundation drafted the Stop Undisclosed Payments in Elections from Ruining Public Accountability Act (the SUPERPAC Act), a streamlined disclosure and disclaimer only bill. We are pleased that on first blush, DISCLOSE 2012 meets the goals of our draft bill.

The bill will create robust reporting requirements for Super PACs, corporations, unions and nonprofit organizations that decide to make campaign expenditures. It will also require reporting of transfers by those groups to others making such expenditures, to prevent the money laundering that makes it easy to hide huge campaign contributions.

DISCLOSE 2012 will also require ads to contain disclaimers by the top officials of such groups, similar to the stand by your ad mandates required of candidates. In addition, shareholders and members of outside groups will be informed of campaign spending, and lobbyists will be required to report their spending on independent expenditures and electioneering communications.

When the Supreme Court decided the Citizens United case, it hung its hat on the theory that systems were in place to ensure unlimited corporate and union spending would be disclosed on the Internet. The Court was, at best, naïve. Because the Court created a whole new kind of spending, there was no disclosure system in place. (And the moribund Federal Election Commission would never be able to create such a system through a rulemaking process.) DISCLOSE 2012 creates that system of transparency and as such should receive wide support from members on both sides of the aisle.

Early primary spending has demonstrated that previously unheard of expenditures will become commonplace and overwhelm the 2012 elections. At a minimum, voters have a right to know whether the Super PAC that paid for an ad they just watched is tied to a candidate, or was funded by corporation or union with very special interests. Candidates will know who is footing the bill for ads that support their candidacy, even if such ads are technically not “coordinated” with their campaigns. With DISLOSE 2012, the voters will know too.

Here is a statement from Ellen Miller on the bill, and see below for a redlined comparison of the version of the DISCLOSE Act that fell to Republican obstruction in the Senate in 2010.

We've taken the just-introduced 2012 version of the DISCLOSE Act and compared it to its 2010 predecessor (which didn't get cloture in the Senate.) This comparison is much rougher version that I would have liked to generate, but we had to scrape the 2012 version from a PDF and try to clean it up. That scraping and cleaning effort is far from perfect, so it may be difficult to read in parts.

Even with the mess, it's interesting to see what stayed the same and what changed. Once you get past the first 15 pages or so, all of which were struck out, it become apparent how the legislation has significantly changed. The black text is the original version; everything in red is what was added or deleted.

Redline of 2010 and 2012 DISCLOSE Act

Super PACs have been a hot topic in the news recently as reporters, advocacy groups, and the public try to follow the money flowing into the political system as the 2012 elections approach.

On January 31st MSNBC reported that Stephen Colbert's super PAC, Americans for A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, was the first to submit its end-of-year report to the Federal Election Commission. The deadline for these reports was January 31st.

Colbert included his super PAC's filing on his super PAC's website, ColbertSuperPac.com, but this is not required. This kind of information can generally be found on the FEC website under Campaign Finance Reports and Data, but you have to know exactly what you are looking for.

The FEC portal includes a variety of search tools, including a searchable database of disclosure reports, downloadable copies of electronic filings, images of all financial reports, and other campaign finance data. However, these search tools suffer from a lack of a user-friendly interface. Several organizations, including the Sunlight Foundation, ProPublica, and the New York Times, have taken FEC data and put it in more user-friendly formats while focusing on information most relevant to the upcoming presidential election.

A search for Colbert's super PAC using the FEC's Disclosure Database search tool returns 13 filings, including the Year-End report displayed on Colbert's super PAC website. This report indicates that the super PAC has raised $825,475.46 since July 2011 and spent $151,521.01 as of December 31, 2011.

TPM published an article as the FEC deadline approached as well that focused on Newt Gingrich's campaign filing. The article cited several specifics regarding Gingrich's campaign spending, all of which are publicly available using the same online FEC portal. A search for "Newt 2012," the official name of Gingrich's presidential election campaign, under the "View Images of All Financial Reports" tab returns a list of documents filed. Viewing the PDF of the Year-End report shows all the numbers used in the article mentioned above.

It is necessary to emphasize again that these tools can be extremely hard to use, and you have to be very precise in your search terms. For example, a search for "Gingrich" using either search tool will return many results for other organizations related to Gingrich, such as "Friends of Newt Gingrich," but it will not return other better options.

The TPM article stated that the campaign had $2.1 million at the end of 2011 and owed over a million dollars in debt. The top level summary on page two of the Year-End report shows the $2.1 million the campaign has in cash and the $1.2 million it currently owes.

The article specified that the campaign's debt includes $1,666.66 to Rick Tyler - a former Gingrich aide who currently manages a super PAC in support of his candidacy. A search for "Rick Tyler" shows the $1,666.66 the campaign owes this former Gingrich aide on page 5166.

The debt also includes $350,000 for private jet flights. A search for "Moby Dick Airways," the private jet company that it has been reported Newt Gingrich uses, shows that the campaign began the quarter owing $451,946, incurred an additional $33,008 in charges this quarter, then made a payment of $133,008 to conclude 2011 with an outstanding balance of $351,946.

Lastly, the article says that the campaign paid $47,005 to Gingrich to buy a mailing list. A search for "Newt Gingrich" shows the campaign's $47,005 disbursement to the candidate for the express purpose of "list purchase" on page 4954.

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey helped with the research for this post.

"The News Without Transparency" shows you what the news would look like without public access to information. Laws and regulations that force the government to make the data it has publicly available are absolutely vital, along with services that take that raw data and make it easy for reporters to write sentences like the ones we've redacted in the piece above. If you have an article you'd like us to put through the redaction machine, please send us an email at mbuck@sunlightfoundation.com.