Tuesday's battle for the Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania's newly-redrawn 17th Congressional District has emerged as the biggest money magnet so far for outside groups spending on House primaries, data compiled by the Sunlight Foundation's Follow the Unlimited Money tracker shows.
Outside groups have spent more than $572,000 in the semi-rural central Pennsylvania district, most of it to defeat Rep. Tim Holden. The only other House races that have drawn more outside spending so far have been special elections in which Democrats and Republicans were competing.
By contrast, the Pennsylvania race is a Democrat-on-Democrat affair: Holden, a ...
Continue readingWho funded pro-Romney ad in South Carolina? We may never know
The ever-hard to track Citizens for a Working America, last seen in Iowa making a big Christmas Eve ad buy on behalf of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, has resurfaced in a new-old incarnation.
Confused? So were we, when we last wrote about this shadowy organization. No wonder.
Turns out that the name Citizens for a Working America is shared by two linked but distinct entities:
- Citizens for a Working America PAC, a super PAC that first surfaced in 2010 when it helped defeat veteran Democratic Rep. John Spratt, a South Carolina Democrat who chaired the House Budget Committee, and ...
Democrat, Republican political collectors ask FEC to OK texted contributions
The economy may be largely lackluster but the political sector is so flush with cash it appears on the verge of creating a whole new profession: Campaign contribution brokers.
That would be the result if the Federal Election Commission approves a bipartisan request that it made public late Wednesday afternoon. Filing on behalf of two campaign consulting groups, one Democrat and one Republican, the blue-chip Washington law firm Arendt Fox urges the FEC to approve a system for texting small contributions to political campaigns that would allow middlemen to collect as much as 50 cents on every donated dollar.
The ...
Continue readingBiggest loser in Pennsylvania primary isn’t Santorum
That sniffling sound you hear is not Rick Santorum's supporters bemoaning his decision Tuesday to pull the plug on his presidential campaign but the managers of the Keystone State's television stations counting the ad dollars they have lost. There are 46 of them, according to the Community Media Database created and maintained by Rob McCausland.
So far this year, the race for the Republican presidential nomination has brought a bonanza of ad dollars to broadcasters in states that have played host to early contests, the more so because of the rise of super PACs, political action committees that ...
Continue readingSuper PAC fallout: Stories we like
President Obama has stirred a lot of controversy with his comments about the Supreme Court, but you should hear what his 2008 opponent, Sen. John McCain, has to say about the justices.
The Arizona Republican's characteristically unvarnished assessment of the high court and its ruling overturning his landmark campaign finance reform bill are in an interview that National Public Radio did with him and the co-author of the legislation, former Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc. NPR used excerpts for a series aired last week on money and politics, but has just made the full transcript available. It's a must-read ...
Continue readingThe best coverage money can buy? New Philly newspaper owners are old hands at exchanging money for influence
It had to have been a weird scene Monday at the headquarters of Philadelphia's two daily newspapers when some of the region's biggest political money men -- frequent targets of some of the journalists' aggressive coverage -- showed up to tell reporters they now own the place.
The sale of the Philadelphia Media Network, the corporation that owns the Pulitzer Prize-winning Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, is another sign of the continuing financial struggles of daily newspapers, and it raises questions about how much independent reporting about political influence will be possible in the nation's fifth biggest city ...
Continue readingNew Sony president one half of SOPA power couple
Nicole Seligman's newly official promotion to president of the Sony Corporation is the latest evidence of the powerful political connections that have been amassed by interests battling to stop online piracy, and enhances the status of what might be called SOPA's power couple.
Seligman, who as Sony's vice president and general counsel was an outspoken advocate for the entertainment giant's intellectual property rights, is the wife of Joel Klein, a former Justice Department top gun who in 2010 left his post as chancellor of New York City schools to hire on with another corporation that has ...
Continue readingWhy DeMint’s donation to a super PAC could give his party heartburn
Super PACs have given GOP megadonors new avenues to make campaign contributions at a faster clip than ever, but in at least one quarter of the party establishment, they may be causing some heartburn this week.
Sen. Jim DeMint's decision to funnel $500,000 to the Club for Growth, disclosed in campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission this week, represents a deliberate snub of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and an indication of the potential for super PACs to erode the power of the established political parties.
"Senator DeMint donated money to the Club for Growth ...
Continue readingOn patent law, Mavs owner Mark Cuban knows the score
When two popular Internet utilities get in a high-priced legal fight and a famously outspoken NBA owner jumps in the middle, it's hard not to keep your eye on the roundball -- especially on the day March Madness gets underway.
After Yahoo sued Facebook for patent violations earlier this week, Dallas Mavericks boss Mark Cuban took aim at Yahoo and the nation's patent law with a satirical blog post that got picked up by the Huffington Post and is generating a lot of buzz on the web. The j'accuse by Cuban (full disclosure: he's a sometime Sunlight ...
Continue readingAbramoff: ‘You’ve got to trust me.’
Over the weekend, Jack Abramoff disputed one of our blog posts.. Since the convicted former lobbyist neither responded to our call for comment before publication nor called us afterwards to point out what he said was our error, we decided to catch up with him Monday night at the National Press Club to ask a few questions.
It was an intriguing evening that featured the disgraced ex-lobbyist trying to out-reform the reformers as well as a potentially explosive allegation that Abramoff had a potential business partner in the Washington press corps.
The setting was a panel on campaign finance reform ...
Continue reading
59063
