During the past two decades, the National Rifle Association has contributed more than $2 million to support politicians in New Mexico and Texas, where the nation's latest outbreaks of gun violence occurred this week.
Both are among the majority of states that provide broad protections for gunowners privacy, according to information compiled by the Sunlight Foundation.
MORE: For data on the gun debate, see the Sunlight Foundation's resource page.
Data pulled from Influence Explorer, a Sunlight Foundation database that tabulates federal campaign contributions from the Center for Responsive Politics and state contributions from the National Institute of Money ...
Continue readingOn eve of big legislative battle, is gun lobby targeting kids?
If, as the old newsroom truism holds, it takes three to make a trend, then the National Rifle Association's much talked-about video, which juxtaposes a mention of President Barack Obama's daughters against a backdrop of menacing images of high-powered guns and people toting them, appears to be the latest manifestation of a bizarre new way that the gun lobby is choosing to engage its critics: by targeting their children.
School-age progeny of America's first families have generally been verboten topics in press coverage or political debate because of their age, vulnerability and the fact that -- unlike their ...
Continue readingImmigration lobby begins to flex muscle
This week, while much of Washington's attention is focused on the debates over gun control and Chuck Hagel's nomination as defense secretary, the pieces are beginning to move into place for another legislative battle that could make the other two look like a lobbying Little League (sorry, NRA).
What has all the earmarks of a well-orchestrated roll-out of the administration's immigration reform package began Sunday with a front page New York Times story. This is being followed up by an immigration event every day this week organized by proponents of more liberalized immigration laws:
- Monday: Los Angeles ...
Dark money group takes aim at potential Obama appointee Chuck Hagel
A committee that spent more than $300,000 in dark money to defeat President Barack Obama this year is now spending more to offer advice on whom he should appoint to his cabinet.
Former Sen. Chuck Hagel, seen at right, hasn't run for office in a decade, but he now is the target of a negative TV ad, thanks to widespread reports that the president is poised to nominate him as a replacement for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who has signalled that he wants to retire at the end of Obama's first term.
MORE: Hagel alumni in defense ...
Continue readingMoney in politics drives up U.S. corruption perception index
The United States scores worse than many of its partners in the developed world on this year's Corruption Perception Index in part because of money in politics, the group that publishes the index said Wednesday.
Transparency International's compilation of surveys by well known civic and business groups ranked the U.S. at 19 among 174 countries, with No. 1 being the country with the least perception of corruption (a ranking shared by Denmark, Finland and New Zealand) and No. 174 (Somalia) being the country perceived as the most corrupt. Among the nations getting a better ranking than than ...
Continue readingICYMI: Sunlight’s report on Susan Rice’s financial stake in Keystone XL
The widely reported possibility of United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice’s nomination to become secretary of state now has a lot... View Article
Continue readingThe $2 billion lunch
Whatever will be on the menu when Mitt Romney and Barack Obama sit down for a mano-a-mano lunch today at the White House, we already know that those two diners have run up quite a tab.
At this point, we know that the two former presidential rivals and their supporters spent more than $2 billion on the campaign, as calculated by the Center for Responsive Politics. And that isn't even the complete tab. The post-election campaign reports are due at the Federal Election Commission on Dec. 6.
Of the money we know about so far, more than $600 million ...
Continue readingNo donors to report but $1.5 million to spend for Romney
A political action committee that so far has reported no donations in the current campaign cycle has just unleashed $1.5 million in Internet advertising to help Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
The big web buy, which features a reedy-voiced young girl accusing President Barack Obama of leaving her generation in the lurch, comes courtesy of Right Change, a committee that was active on behalf of a number of Republican House and Senate candidates in 2010 but is only now surfacing in this year's campaign.
According to the group's website, Right Change encompasses a "national movement" of more ...
Continue readingEleventh hour political donations marked by Adelson largesse
A casino-fueled and Israel-inspired power couple that so far has underwritten Republican candidates and causes to the tune of more than $35 million in the 2012 campaign continued its open-handed ways in the closing weeks of the contest.
The final accountings of campaign committees before Election Day are due at the Federal Election Commission at midnight Thursday and early returns show big contributions from Sheldon and Miriam Adelson in the first two weeks of October.
Sheldon Adelson, who owns the Las Vegas Sands Corp. as well as casinos in Bethelehem, Pa., Singapore and Macau, gave $1.5 million Independence Virginia ...
Continue readingTwo Midwestern states targets of gun violence and the NRA
Two states struggling with gun violence this fall, Wisconsin and Michigan, also have been targeted for campaign expenditures by the National Rifle Association.
The big gun rights group appears to have its biggest political footprint in Wisconsin, where a gunman on Sunday shot seven women -- three fatally -- before killing himself in state's second mass shooting this year. Of the $5.9 millon the NRA Political Victory Fund, has spent so far to defeat President Barack Obama, at least some has gone to Wisconsin. While the Federal Election Commission does not require independent expenditure groups to identify ...
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