A recent beltway fundraiser produced big bucks for Mitch McConnell. Hosted by the lobby shop of Haley Barbour and featuring 18 Republican senators, more than $80,000 was pumped into McConnell's campaign coffers by PACs and lobbyists.
Continue readingPolitical ad watch: 48 new commercials in one day
The deluge of ads gives us an insight in to where the smart money is spending. And reminds us the smart money believes that going negative works.
Continue readingLabor is split on supporting Keystone XL, but not on lobbying for it
Unions may be publicly divided on Keystone XL, but when lawmakers hear from labor's lobbyists in Washington, they hear that labor loves Keystone.
Continue readingUnions, Obama dark money group press GOP on immigration
A new fight over immigration appears to be brewing, but it likely has more to do with the 2014 elections than with any real chance legislation will be passed.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, appeared to close that door on Wednesday, when he ruled out any negotiations over the sweeping immigration law the Senate passed in June. On the same day, Organizing for Action, the dark money committee that grew out of President Barack Obama's campaign, sent an email to supporters calling on them to pressure Republican lawmakers to take up the immigration bill. The committee suggested targeting Rep ...
Continue readingTo the victors go the spoils: What top donors want
With the election over, a Congress full of lame ducks -- along with next year's class of soon-to-be sworn-in lawmakers, ready for freshmen orientation -- returns to Washington next week. Lobbyists and special interests that opened their wallets for candidates are poised to call in chits in a tense environment dominated by the budget impasse that threatens to impose sweeping automatic cuts to defense and social programs if Congress doesn't act.
Top CEOs of more than 80 companies issued a statement on October 25 calling on Congress to solve the issue by considering tax increases along with spending cuts. In ...
Continue readingWeb of union giving
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Deep-pocketed corporate moguls have captured most of the headlines this year when it comes to creative campaign giving, but the working class is showing it can play the same game.
The Supreme Court's landmark 2010 decision in Citizens United gave unions, as well as corporations, the right to spend money directly from their treasuries to influence elections. An examination of independent expenditures by labor unions, captured by Sunlight's Follow the Unlimited Money, reveals an interlocking web of donations to a plethora of super PACs, some of them clearly ...
Continue readingSuper PACs that stay off the air
With early voting starting Saturday in Florida, a Miami-based group of community organizers and union members will be undertaking a major push across five of the battleground state’s cities to get voters to the polls.
And this group—believe it or not—is a super PAC. Yes, one of the same committees that are often described as tools of the corporate and the rich and maligned for polluting the airwaves with negative advertising.
But Florida Freedom PAC is a partnership between Florida New Majority, a community organizing group that sprung up in 2009 to empower the state’s minorities ...
Continue readingGross Political Product: Outside campaign spending tops 2010 total
In a campaign that's supposed to be about an ailing economy, there's just one financial indicator that remains consistently robust: Call it the Gross Political Product.
The latest signal of just how profitable a business politics remains is available on Sunlight's Follow the Unlimited Money, which shows outside spending at nearly $465 million as of Sunday evening. That's more than the total for the entire 2010 campaign, the first that took place following the Supreme Court's landmark Citizens United decision, which allowed corporations and unions to give in unlimited amounts.
This cycle's outside spending ...
Continue readingHealth care lobbying groups head to the Supreme Court
If war is politics by other means, so is litigation. While there will be plenty of rhetoric today about President Obama's health care law on the second anniversary of its signing -- including a new op-ed by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who was for the health care reform in Massachusetts before he was against it nationally -- the big battle begins Monday, when the Supreme Court opens an unusual three days of argument over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
In many respects, the mega-case -- a compilation of six separate cases that have been wending through ...
Continue readingFEC Chills Debate on Post-Citizens United Transparency
The Federal Election Commission is the supposed enforcer of the nation’s campaign finance and disclosure laws. But, with commissioners evenly... View Article
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