The day after TransparencyCamp, Sunlight joined the good folks at the Voting Information Project to host a hackathon. It was... View Article
Continue readingBig donors to Democratic super PACs visited White House
Though President Barack Obama called super PACs a "threat to democracy" before embracing them last February in his own reelection effort, he and members of his inner circle had no trouble meeting with the kind of people who contribute to them. At least 16 individuals who gave money to some of the major outside spending groups had meetings with White House officials--including Obama himself.
The group of 16 includes major Democratic donors, bundlers for Obama's campaign and a few individuals who have official roles in the administration. Some have frequent access to both the president and his inner circle ...
Continue readingSuper PACs play big in Texas
A flood of tea party money reshaped the Texas political landscape Tuesday, ousting a seven-term Democratic congressman who had campaign help from former President Bill Clinton, and forcing a one-time favorite for the Republican Senate nomination into a runoff.
The Associated Press is calling the ouster of veteran Rep. Silvestre Reyes, seen at right, a "stunner" that almost guarantees the heavily Democratic south Texas district will be represented in Congress next year by Beto O'Rourke, an ex-El Paso city councilman who favors the legalization of marijuana. Reyes out-raised O'Rourke by nearly $700,000 but the tea-party-affiliated Campaign for ...
Continue readingRomney super PAC challenges FEC on disclosure
The Federal Election Commission is trying to get some of the country's top super PACs to be more open about where they spent their money -- and is getting shrugged off by the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney.
This year, the normally quiescent FEC dinged six of the nation's top 11 spending super PACs, some multiple times, for not disclosing the states in which they aired political ads during the presidential primary and caucus season, one of the requirements on spending reports related to elections. In response, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, Restore Our Future, challenged the FEC ...
Continue readingFEC likely to OK campaign contributions via text message
In a busy day at the Federal Election Commission, commissioners on Thursday appeared ready to approve a proposal to allow small campaign donations via cell phone carriers, and, in a separate case, said they would a consider whether a congressional challenger's ads for his plumbing company have to be treated as electioneering communications.
The three Republican commissioners were ready to give the green light to allow small, anonymous donations to campaigns via a text message aggregation service. But a Democratic commissioner, Ellen Weintraub, wanted some questions answered and said she was not ready to vote on it. The FEC ...
Continue readingCalifornia dreaming: Obama bags big political donations in Silicon Valley, Hollywood
For President Obama, there's gold in the Golden State. According to the California News Service, he's making his 15th trip to the state as president, trips that have included 35 fundraisers. Many of those have oscillated between two important fundraising constituences for the president -- Hollywood and Silicon Valley. With Obama's three fundraisers today and tomorrow, this time it's NorCal's tech community that is getting the chance to shower multi-thousand dollar checks to the president.
There are conflicting signs about which community can be a bigger fundraising draw for the president and his allies. The vast ...
Continue readingSuper PACs spent almost $1 million in Tuesday’s primaries
Super PACs and other independent groups spent almost $1 million in Kentucky and Arkansas, the two states that held primaries on Tuesday.
So far this year, super PACs have spent at least $16 million on congressional races, a fraction of what they've pumped into the presidential campaign. But the smaller amounts spent in congressional races have sometimes produced big results, pushing a few candidates to primary victories. So far, super PACs and other independent group have spent on 88 races.
In Kentucky the big spender was the Liberty for All super PAC,which run by a few twenty-something supporters ...
Broadcasters sue to keep political ad files offline
The nation's broadcasters sued the Federal Communications Commission Monday over a rule that requires them to post political ads bought at some stations online.
At risk: a ruling designed to make information about political ad buys available via the Internet in time for the fall election. Sunlight has calls into both the FCC and the National Association of Broadcasters, the group suing the agency, for comment. So far, no response.
But Corie Wright, senior policy counsel for Free Press, and a longtime advocate of the ad buy rule, called the lawsuit "nothing more than an attempt by the NAB ...
Continue readingSuper donors provide bulk of money to super PACs
Super PACs have broken the $200 million mark in donations and $100 million in spending, with much of the money coming from a few donors with deep pockets whose largesse has changed the dynamics of political campaigning.
Some of the big players in the current cycle, many of whom have been big donors for decades, made their first super PAC contributions to support one of the major presidential candidates, then shifted focus to Congressional contests, with some pledging millions for tight races.
Harold Simmons, a major contributor to conservative super PACs, has been in the spotlight for his $13.5 ...
Super PAC spending crosses $100 million: Where did it all go?
Now that super PACs' spending in the 2012 election has just crossed the $100 million spending mark—more than twice the amount spent in independent campaign expenditures by all outside groups at this point in the 2008 election--Sunlight decided to reflect on what else voters might have gotten for all that money.
With $100 million, you could:
- Pay the annual tuition for 2,207 students at most expensive undergraduate education in the country—Columbia University;
- Snap up 632 median-priced single-family homes in metropolitan areas from the country's housing market;
- Fill the tank of the most gas-guzzling SUV—a Chevrolet ...
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