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 readingGOP commissioners quash FEC dark money probe
Republicans on the Federal Election Commission voted to block investigations into two more major political nonprofits that the commission's own staff lawyers argued broke election law in 2010, according to recently released documents.
Continue readingHow TV stations are letting political advertisers play hide and seek
Sunlight and Campaign Legal Center, represented by Georgetown University's Institute for Public Representation, are filing complaints against 11 TV stations for letting political advertisers hide their identites.
Continue readingAnd the ads go on: 2012’s big campaign spenders keep up the air wars
Think the campaign season was over? Since Election Day, dozens of TV, web and radio ads have been airing in political battlegrounds, many of them directly naming lawmakers. The Sunlight Foundation has been archiving them on Ad Hawk, a mobile app that allows viewers to help flag political advertising that they are seeing and learn about the funders behind ads .
Many of these ads have popped up just this week. Though the ad content often relates to Congress’s handling of the impending fiscal cliff, in many cases they also have an eye on the 2014 election. Big spending groups ...
Continue readingFour House races where outside money may have pushed the needle
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Outside spending can have its biggest impact in smaller races. And in a number of contests for congressional seats where there was a significant money advantage for one side, independent expenditures seemed to help push the needle.
Here are four members of the 113th Congress whose chances of winning increased after receiving a significant boost from outside nonprofits and super PACs attacking their opponents or praising them.
At some point in the fall, for each of these winners, the non-partisan Cook Political Report shifted its ratings ...
Eleven House races drawing 11th-hour outside money
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It doesn't take a whole lot of money to make a big difference in some House races, and as the days dwindle down to hours before polls close on Nov. 6, some outside interest groups are trying to do just that. Sunlight's weekly survey of independent campaign expenditures found that some congressional contests that hadn't previously registered on our radar were suddenly drawing lots of outside cash late in the campaign.
Seven of ...
Continue readingAfter health care, what will happen to Dodd-Frank?
While the U.S. Supreme Court has now upheld the health care reform law as constitutional, conservative groups still are on a legal attack on the constitutionality of one of the other signature achievements of President Barack Obama’s term in office: the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
Last week, C. Boyden Gray, an eminence grise of conservative Washington, along with the Competitiveness Enterprise Institute and the 60 Plus Association, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court to challenge the constitutionality of Dodd-Frank, joining the Texas-based community bank, State National Bank of Big Spring. While the Dodd-Frank has been under ...
Continue readingFight to oust Hatch fuels a $1 million outside money blitz
With Sen. Orrin Hatch appearing to pass a first crucial political test on Thursday night when his supporters swelled attendance at GOP caucus meetings in his state to record numbers, the inundation of outside money in the Utah Senate race may only pick up steam. Super PACs have played a bigger role in the multi-stage contest that will decide the 36-year Senate veteran's fate than any other 2012 congressional contest so far. And that's not even counting the money spent by a nonprofit group spending hundreds of thousands of dollars supporting Senator Hatch.
At least six outside interest ...
Continue readingMoney to burn? Flush GOP-linked groups host swanky D.C. forum
Not all dark money flows in the same direction. That was one lesson that could be drawn this week as two deep-pocketed sister nonprofits, Crossroads GPS and American Action Network, provided a forum for Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, to highlight his conservative credentials.
Hatch is facing a primary challenge on his right in a June primary that also seems to pit the two center-right outside money behemoths, American Action Network and Crossroads, against FreedomWorks, a Tea Party-affiliated super PAC that's backing the six-term incumbent's GOP opponent, state Sen. Dan Liljenquist.
The event where Hatch appeared Tuesday demonstrated the ...
Continue readingNew lobbying tracker makes it easier to follow the revolving door
In 13 days, Kyle Simmons, former chief of staff to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and currently a member of the FIRST Group--a Washington consulting firm he launched with three other former congressional aides--will be eligible to lobby his old colleagues.
In 11 days, Robert McCreary, former chief of staff to Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., and currently a registered lobbyist for NEK Advanced Security Group, will legally be able to lobby his former colleagues on behalf of his new employer.
In 10 days, Andy Weis, a former general counsel of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ...
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