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Tag Archive: PACs

Reporter’s notebook: How we came up with that campaign finance maze

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If it makes you all feel any better, campaign finance is hard for us too.

At the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group, we make a speciality of money in politics reporting, so when the dark money groups that we often cover burst into the headlines -- on reports that the Internal Revenue Service was denying the coveted tax exempt status to Tea Party groups -- we figured it was time to put what we know about the campaign finance ecosystem out there.

The process turned out to be revealing, if painful.

You can see the final product here. But we learned a lot ...

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Cruz gears up fundraising machine

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Photo of Sen. Ted Cruz, D-TexasSen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who has managed to upend the adage about freshmen being seen and not heard in the less-than 10 weeks since he took his seat as the Lone Star State's junior senator, likes to portray himself as a political maverick. But when it comes to fundraising, he's playing like a classic insider.

The brash Texas Republican, who this week is trying to defund President Barack Obama's signature health care law, earlier this month registered the Cruz Victory Committee, a joint fundraising arm. By creating the group, Cruz eases the way for big givers to ...

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NRA’s allegiances reach deep into Congress

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Just over half (51 percent) of the members of the new Congress that convenes next month have received funding from the National Rifle Association’s political action committee at some point in their political careers, an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation finds. And 47 percent received money from the NRA in the most recent race in which they ran. The numbers give insight into the depth and breadth of support that the nation’s most powerful gun lobby commands. They also highlight the primary obstacle to quick action on gun control in response to last week’s massacre in Newton, Conn. – deep and long-lasting allegiances to the National Rifle Association.

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Super PAC profile: Red White and Blue for Santorum

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Before the Iowa contest that catapulted Rick Santorum to front-runner status, the patriotically-named Red White and Blue PAC spent $537,200 and produced two television ads touting the former Pennsylvania senator's conservatism and electability. Borrowing a word from the organizers of a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, the ad above urged Iowans to "Restore America's greatness."

The PAC is a relatively new one, registering with the Federal Electoral Commission in October 2011. Like most super PACs, Red, White and Blue has yet to disclose its financial backers, but MSNBC identified one of its donors as Foster Friess, president ...

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Big PACs contribute $83,000 to super committee members

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The political action committees of Lockheed Martin, the National Association of Realtors, Pfizer and Chevron all reported making contributions to members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction--better known as the super committee--in the roughly 20 days of August after House and Senate leadership appointed them to the panel.

PACs for 19 of the biggest political donors in the country, as determined by Center for Responsive Politics, have reported contributing more than $83,000 to 10 of the 12 members of the super committee or their leadership PACs, Federal Eelection Commission filings show. It's the first glimpse available ...

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CFC (Combined Federal Campaign) Today 59063

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